Philosophical Reflections on the Case of Pinocchio

Original Illustration by Enrico Mazzanti for Carlo Collodi's 

tale of a punk puppet: Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883)

Although the Pinocchio myth has, thankfully, transcended its Disneyfication and is often now critically discussed in relation to cyborgs, posthumanism and artificial intelligence (both reflecting and challenging contemporary concerns), I think it important to also remember the original story by Carlo Collodi ...

Born in Florence in 1826, Italian author and journalist Sig. Collodi translated French fairy tales by Perrault in 1875, before beginning work on his own allegory for children five years later known as the 'Story of a Puppet' and first published in weekly installments in a newspaper created for young readers. Eventually, the tale was produced in book form entitled Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883). Collodi achieved world-wide fame with this work, although, unfortunately for him, he died a few years after its publication in 1890.

As everybody knows, Pinocchio is a hand-carved wooden-figure with a nose capable of dramatic changes in size whenever he is under stress or caught in a lie; a marionette who dreamt of becoming a real boy, but instead became a cultural icon whose story inspired countless new editions and spin-offs and has been adapted into over 260 languages.

Pinocchio is also a rebel who ridicules the paternal authority of his maker at every opportunity and even steals the old man's wig. Collodi is at pains to remind his readers that Pinocchio isn't a hero, but rather a rascal, a ragamuffin, and a confirmed rogue who won't allow anyone to pull his strings. If girls just want to have fun, then punk-puppets, it seems, just want to cause chaos, crush crickets, climb trees, and chase after butterflies. It's no surprise to discover that Pinocchio was much-admired by Malcolm McLaren. 

His bad behaviour, however, is roundly condemned by the author-narrator and Collodi reinforces the conventional moral belief that whilst good behaviour deserves to be rewarded, bad behaviour deserves to be punished - and punished severely. Thus it is that, in the earliest version of his story, Pinocchio comes to a tragic and violent end: his enemies, the Fox and the Cat, bind his arms, put a noose round his neck, and hang him from the branch of an old oak tree:

"a tempestuous northerly wind began to blow and roar angrily, and it beat the poor puppet from side to side, making him swing violently [...] And the swinging gave him atrocious spasms [...] His breath failed him [...] He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched his legs, gave a long shudder, and hung stiff and insensible."  

It was only in the revised and extended book re-telling of his story that a resurrected Pinocchio, under the influence of a fairy godmother with blue hair, learns his lesson and comes good; finally acting in a responsible fashion and willing to study, work hard, and provide for his elderly father, thereby earning the ultimate reward: human status.

In sum: on the one hand, The Adventures of Pinocchio teaches a positive moral lesson: 'Listen to the voice of your conscience, children, and the truth shall set you free!' But on the other hand, it threatens bad behaviour and disobedience with capital punishment. Indeed, as one critic reminds us, Pinocchio is not only put to death for his sins in the original tale, but "stabbed, whipped, starved, jailed, punched in the head, and has his legs burned off".

Of course, some might point out that he's just a wooden doll - but he's a wooden doll, we are encouraged to believe, with the ability to experience pain. No wonder, then, that many sensitive young readers were upset by the savage cruelty that Collodi delights in.

As a Nietzschean, however, I share in this idea that humanity is an effect of tremendous cruelty and suffering experienced over a long period of time. Indeed, what else is human history and culture other than a spiritualisation and intensification of cruelty? To create a puppet with the right to claim human status is, therefore, to create a being that knows how to endure the agony of existence and still manage to give a little whistle. 

See:

Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. with an introduction and notes by Ann Lawson Lucas, (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe, (Cambridge University Press, 1994). 

Nathaniel Rich, 'Bad Things Happen to Bad Children', Slate, (24 Oct 2011): click here.


This post is dedicated to Georgia Panteli.

Case Studies from The White Stocking 3: Ted Whiston (An Abusive Husband with a Cuckold Fetish)

Anne Van Der Linden: Le bas blanc (2013)

annevanderlinden.net

I.

We have already discussed how Elsie is a prick tease in pearl earrings; and how her illicit lover and dance partner, Sam Adams, is a stocking fetishist who likes to make love to music, happy to humiliate the husbands and boyfriends of the young girls he preys upon.

But, let's be clear from the outset: Ted Whiston is no angel, or a man deserving of our pity. He's an abusive husband with - I would suggest - a cuckold fetish and a taste for sexual violence. Thus it is that, after Elsie receives a pair of pearl earrings as a Valentine's gift from Sam Adams, Whiston leaves for work brooding, but secretly excited by the idea of his wife being fucked by the older man.

And this is why he behaved as he did at the Christmas party two years earlier, when Adams publicly ravished his fiancée upon the dance floor and then pocketed one of her stockings that she had mistakenly carried with her instead of a handkerchief and then accidentally dropped in front of him. Whiston was angry that she let Adams not only pick up the item in question, but keep it too. However, although he would occasionally speak of the matter afterwards, it was one that he tellingly allowed to go unresolved.


II.

When Whiston gets home from work on Valentine's evening, he's tired and depressed, but ready to engage in a little sadomasochistic sex play with Elsie, who, it seems, is an eager and consensual participant in such. Lawrence writes:

"All day the male in him had been uneasy, and this had fatigued him. She was curiously against him, inclined, as she sometimes was nowadays, to make mock of him and jeer at him and cut him off. He did not understand this, and it angered him deeply. She was uneasy before him.

      She knew he was in a state of suppressed irritation. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands, his brow was drawn stiffly. Yet she could not help goading him."

Almost immediately, he asks her about the white stocking, with vicious resentment in his voice. This is the fetish object that excites and unites him, her, and Adams in a perverse relationship. She leaves the room and when she returns she is wearing the white stockings - most likely stained with Sam Adams's semen - and starts to parade around in front of him, admiring her own pretty legs and lifting up her skirt so that he might better see them and get a flash also of her frilly knickers. 

Whiston tells her to stop making a spectacle of herself. But Elsie continues to dance round the room, kicking up her legs and singing as she did so, seemingly indifferent to how this might make him feel. They are, of course, deliberately inciting violent feelings of sexual jealousy and humiliation, as they delve into dark corners of the pornographic imagination. He calls her a whore and tells her to stop acting so shamelessly and yet he clearly delights in her behaviour, just as his abuse excites her: 

"She was rousing all his uncontrollable anger. He sat glowering. Every one of her sentences stirred him up like a red-hot iron. Soon it would be too much." But still she doesn't stop - not until he suddenly - though inevitably - explodes into violence:

"He seemed to thrust his face and his eyes forward at her, as he rose slowly and came to her. She watched transfixed in terror. Her throat made a small sound, as she tried to scream.

      Then, quick as lightning, the back of his hand struck her with a crash across the mouth, and she was flung back blinded against the wall. The shock shook a queer sound out of her. And then she saw him still coming on, his eyes holding her, his fist drawn back, advancing slowly. At any instant the blow might crash into her.

      Mad with terror, she raised her hands with a queer clawing movement to cover her eyes and her temples, opening her mouth in a dumb shriek. There was no sound. But the sight of her slowly arrested him. He hung before her, looking at her fixedly, as she stood crouched against the wall with open, bleeding mouth, and wide-staring eyes, and two hands clawing over her temples. And his lust to see her bleed, to break her and destroy her, rose from an old source against her. It carried him. He wanted satisfaction."

This is the brutal counterpoint of the ecstatic dance scene from earlier in the story, between Elsie and Adams (see part two of this post). Lawrence - supremely skilled at writing scenes of sexual violence in which the erotic aspect of the latter and the obscene cruelty of the former become blurred and indistinguishable - brings things to a disturbing climax:

"He had seen her standing there, a piteous, horrified thing, and he turned his face aside in shame and nausea. He went and sat heavily in his chair, and a curious ease, almost like sleep, came over his brain.

      She walked away from the wall towards the fire, dizzy, white to the lips, mechanically wiping her small, bleeding mouth. He sat motionless. Then, gradually, her breath began to hiss, she shook, and was sobbing silently, in grief for herself. Without looking, he saw. It made his mad desire to destroy her come back.
      She felt that now nothing would prevent him if he rose to kill her. She could not prevent him any more. She was yielded up to him. They both trembled in the balance, unconscious."

After a few moments, Elsie lifts her "tear-stained, swollen face" and looks at her husband with forlorn eyes that cause a "great flash of anguish" to pass over his body. He takes her in his arms and holds her with great tenderness, whilst telling her over and over that he loves her. 

III.

Why does Elsie stay with a man who is willing and able to abuse her in this manner? Is she frightened to leave, or is she only too aware of the practical and financial difficulties of leaving? Does she have a support network of friends and family that might enable her to do so?

I don't know and the story doesn't really tell us. I'm somewhat reluctant to suggest that, maybe, she enjoys the violence - just as she seems to enjoy sexual teasing and manipulation. But we need to recall that Elsie is a consenting adult and it's clearly ridiculous to suggest that women can't enjoy the darker aspects of edgeplay (smacking, punching, strangulation, erotic asphyxiation, etc.).

By her own admission, Elsie is bored by her husband and used to his ways. Maybe she needs the physical stimulation that results from such activities and that violence and fear ultimately result in heightened pleasure or jouissance. Besides, as Sylvia would say, every woman adores a fascist - it just becomes a question of who's the Daddy; Ted Whiston or Sam Adams. 

IV.

As for Ted Whiston, what's his story? Why does he need to imagine his wife involved with Sam Adams and to abuse her before he can find his own sexual satisfaction? In order to answer this, we need to understand something of the appeal of cuckold fetish ...

Traditionally, a cuckold was unaware of what was going on behind his back. But in the world of modern fetish, the cuckold is fully complicit in his wife's sexual infidelity and often in control of the affair, deriving pleasure both from his humiliation and the perverse exertion of power. I think a strong argument can be made to suggest that Ted Whiston belongs to this modern school of cuckoldry. Who knows, maybe he was even the one who suggested she carry a white stocking instead of a handkerchief to the dance and ensnare Sam Adams with it ...?      

Interestingly, it's been suggested that there is a solid biological basis for cuckold fetish; that a man who believes his mate to have been getting jiggy with another male will want to copulate more frequently with her in order to compete with his rival. And copulate more vigorously too; thrusting more deeply, ejaculating with more force, and producing more sperm (suggesting that female infidelity is good for him and good for her).

I suspect that Whiston could hardly even get it up without the thought of Elsie in the arms of Adams. Or, indeed, enjoying the attentions of a black-skinned lover who has bought her affections with a bar of chocolate (the ultimate erotico-racist fantasy of a man like Whiston). 

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64.

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking'). 

For the first of the White Stocking case studies - on Elsie Whiston as a prick tease in pearl earrings - click here.

For the second of the White Stocking case studies - on Sam Adams as a Lothario who makes love to music - click here. 

Case Studies from The White Stocking 2: Sam Adams (A Lothario Who Makes Love to Music)

I.

In an essay written in 1927, Lawrence examines the idea that dancing is essentially a form of making love to music, or rhythmic fucking with a melodious accompaniment. He asserts that this is what many - perhaps most - modern people long to experience; particulary those women who wished that man was not such a coarse creature keen to copulate and have done as quickly as possible.

For such women - women who find great pleasure in flirting and sexual foreplay - ejaculation is always premature and the act of coition always a let down; not so much a consummation as a humiliating anti-climax. If their physical desire was to be satisfied anywhere, then it was in the ballroom - not in the bedroom - with a man who intimately knew his way round the dance floor.

Lawrence writes, mockingly: "They wanted heavenly strains to resound, while he held their hand, and a new musical movement to burst forth, as he put his arm round their waist." For sex can be very charming and very delightful, so long as it's sublimated in 3/4 time, like a waltz, and you can keep your clothes on.

All of which brings us to the fascinating case of Elsie Whiston and her dance partner-cum-illicit lover, Sam Adams, in Lawrence's short story 'The White Stocking' (1914) ...

II.

Sam Adams is a forty-year old bachelor with an eye for the ladies. In fact, his fondness for the girls employed in his lace factory - and, to be fair, their fondness for him - was notorious. And he was particularly taken with Elsie, whom he had once ravished on the dance floor at the firm's Christmas do, as she blissfully liked to recall, even though she was now married to another:

"That dance was an intoxication to her. After the first few steps, she felt herself slipping away from herself. She almost knew she was going, she did not even want to go. Yet she must have chosen to go. She lay in the arm of the steady, close man with whom she was dancing, and she seemed to swim away out of contact with the room, into him. She had passed into another, denser element of him, an essential privacy. The room was all vague around her, like an atmosphere, like under sea, with a flow of ghostly, dumb movements. But she herself was held real against her partner, and it seemed she was connected with him, as if the movements of his body and limbs were her own movements, yet not her own movements - and oh, delicious! He also was given up, oblivious, concentrated, into the dance. His eye was unseeing. Only his large, voluptuous body gave off a subtle activity. His fingers seemed to search into her flesh. Every moment, and every moment, she felt she would give way utterly, and sink molten: the fusion point was coming when she would fuse down into perfect unconsciousness at his feet and knees. But he bore her round the room in the dance, and he seemed to sustain all her body with his limbs, his body, and his warmth seemed to come closer into her, nearer, till it would fuse right through her, and she would be as liquid to him, as an intoxication only.
      It was exquisite. When it was over, she was dazed, and was scarcely breathing. She stood with him in the middle of the room as if she were alone in a remote place. He bent over her. She expected his lips on her bare shoulder, and waited. Yet they were not alone, they were not alone."

Indeed, not only were there other couples on the dance floor, but her soon-to-be husband, Ted, was in the next room playing crib and drinking coffee with the old ladies 'cos, as he informed Elsie, he wasn't made for the dance floor. And so, in a sense, he's a deserving cuckold; for, unlike the older man, "Whiston had not made himself real to her. He was only a heavy place in her consciousness."

That is to say, he embodies the spirit of gravity, whilst Adams allows her to float and fly and spin round the dance floor, and holds her in close physical contact, his limbs touching her limbs.

Adams is also first off the mark when Elsie (accidentally on purpose) takes out what she pretends to be her handkerchief and drops it on the floor, only to discover with mock-embarrassment it's actually something quite different:

"For a second it lay on the floor, a twist of white stocking. Then, in an instant, Adams picked it up, with a little, surprised laugh of triumph.
      'That’ll do for me,' he whispered - seeming to take possession of her. And he stuffed the stocking in his trousers pocket ..."

What Adams chooses to do with the stocking, we can only guess; perhaps he takes it home and tries it on - just as Paul Morel tries on the stockings belonging to Clara Dawes in a memorable scene in Sons and Lovers. Or perhaps he masturbates with his fetishistic trophy, before later returning it to Elsie in the post as a semen-stained Valentine's gift; sexually exciting her whilst further humiliating poor Teddy Whiston.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Love to Music', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 41-8.

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64. 

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking'). 

For the first of the White Stocking case studies - on Elsie Whiston as a prick tease with pearl earrings - click here.

For the third of the White Stocking case studies - on Ted Whiston as an abusive husband with a cuckold fetish - click here. 

Case Studies from The White Stocking 1: Elsie Whiston (A Prick Tease with Pearl Earrings)

The desire of the man is for the woman. 

But the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

I.

As mentioned before on this blog, D. H. Lawrence was an ardent stocking fetishist - even though he outrageously branded other men who found women's undergarments sexually exciting as savages. No surprise to discover, therefore, that one of his earliest (and kinkiest) short stories was entitled 'The White Stocking'.

First published in 1914, it's a queer tale about which I'd like to offer an extensive series of remarks, beginning with this post on the central female character, Elsie, a prick tease with pearl earrings. Following, in part two, I'll discuss the character of Sam Adams, a Lothario who likes to make love to music and sexually exploit his young female employees; whilst in part three, I'll talk about the husband, Ted Whiston, and explore his liking for sexual violence and fetishistically playing the role of a cuckold.       

II.

Ted and Elsie are a young married couple. She was a pretty little thing with tousled short black hair and "small, delightful limbs". He very much enjoyed watching her get dressed in the morning, throwing her clothes on with insouciance: "Her slovenliness and untidiness did not trouble him." And when she "picked up the edge of her petticoat, ripped off a torn string of white lace, and flung it on the dressing-table, her careless abandon made his spirit glow" and his cock stiffen. 

She was, he knew, a bit of a minx. But every man loves a tease, flashing cleavage beneath a loosely pinned (i.e. strategically unfastened) black silk dressing-jacket. Having said that, sometimes the sight of her exposed soft flesh disconcerted and even pained him a little. The ruddy-faced postman doesn't seem to mind, however, when Elsie opens the door to him with her tits half-hanging out. He smiles knowingly as he hands over the mail. But she didn't give a fuck about him and "closed the door in his face" as if he didn't exist.

It's Valentine's Day and Elsie is eager to discover what she's been sent from secret admirers. The hideous comic card is quickly dropped on the floor. And the white silk handkerchief, embroidered with her initial, doesn't much impress either: "She smiled pleasantly, and gently put the box aside." The third envelope, however, did contain something that piqued her interest; a long white stocking containing a small box in the toe, which, in turn, contained a pair of pearl earrings:     

"With a little flash of triumph, she lifted ... [the] earrings from the small box, and she went to the mirror. There, earnestly, she began to hook them through her ears, looking at herself sideways in the glass. Curiously concentrated and intent she seemed as she fingered the lobes of her ears, her head bent on one side.

      Then the pearl earrings dangled under her rosy, small ears. She shook her head sharply, to see the swing of the drops. They went chill against her neck, in little, sharp touches. Then she stood still to look at herself, bridling her head in the dignified fashion. Then she simpered at herself. Catching her own eye, she could not help winking at herself and laughing."

The earrings, obviously a gift from a man friend of some description, even come with a little verse:

Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer.
Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer.

Little wonder, then, that her husband Ted is so often racked with jealousy. And no wonder she conceals the truth - and the earrings - from him; showing him the card and the hanky, but pretending that the stocking is simply a free sample sent in the post. Later, however, over breakfast, Elsie teases him with the truth and shows him the verse. Indeed, she even reveals the name of the person whom she knows to have sent these provocative items - her ex-boss, Sam Adams; a forty-year old bachelor well known to have an eye for the ladies.

Ted Whiston becomes sullen. And when his wife admits that she's been for a drink with Adams, he turns nasty (and racist): "'You’d go off with a nigger for a packet of chocolate,' he said, in anger and contempt, and some bitterness." She bit her lip, flushed, and allowed tears to come to her eyes. He was hurt and she was aggrieved, writes Lawrence. But both, I think, are playing a slightly edgy sexual game with one another and the genuineness of their emotions and reactions might be questioned.

After her husband leaves for work, Elsie immediately returned to her pearl earrings:

"Sweet they looked nestling in the little drawer - sweet! She examined them with voluptuous pleasure, she threaded them in her ears, she looked at herself, she posed and postured and smiled, and looked sad and tragic and winning and appealing, all in turn before the mirror. And she was happy, and very pretty."

One suspects that Elsie knew very well that a pearl is not just a beautiful, iridescent object in its own right; nor merely a metaphor for something that is rare and fine. It's also laden with sexual symbolism; seminal fluid, for example, is sometimes referred to as pearl jam due to its translucent whitish colour and the fact that it's prone to coagulate into small globules or pearl-like droplets. Thus it is that, when a man ejaculates on to the neck and breasts of a lover, he is said to have provided her with a pearl necklace.

Elsie wore her earrings all day about the house and flirted with the tradesmen who came to her door, never once thinking of her husband, but remembering with illicit pleasure the time one Christmas when she danced with her boss and allowed him to effectively ravish her in public (see part two of this post), much to Ted's apparent chagrin - but, perhaps also, I'm suggesting, his secret delight (see part three of this post).

Elsie loved her husband. But, unfortunately, she had grown used to him. And she thrilled to the idea that Sam Adams found her attractive: "So that, when, after some months, she met Sam Adams, she was not quite as unkind to him as she might have been." And, little prick tease that she was, she couldn't help playing upon his desire and exploiting his generosity, even though she didn't care one jot for him:

"When Valentine’s day came, which was near the first anniversary of her wedding day, there arrived a white stocking with a little amethyst brooch. Luckily Whiston did not see it, so she said nothing of it to him. She had not the faintest intention of having anything to do with Sam Adams, but once a little brooch was in her possession, it was hers, and she did not trouble her head for a moment how she had come by it.
      Now she had the pearl earrings. They were a more valuable and a more conspicuous present. She would have to ask her mother to give them to her, to explain their presence. She made a little plan in her head. And she was extraordinarily pleased. As for Sam Adams, even if he saw her wearing them, he would not give her away. What fun, if he saw her wearing his earrings! [...] She laughed to herself as she went down town in the afternoon, the pretty drops dangling in front of her curls."

If this doesn't make her the most honest or ethical character in Lawrence's fiction, Elsie remains nevertheless one of the most fascinating. But then, as I said earlier, every man adores a prick tease ...

Certainly I can't help admiring the 64% of heterosexual women who admitted within a recent academic study that they regularly exploited their charms and played games of seduction based upon sexual insincerity in order to make themselves feel not only desirable, but powerful. And - if lucky - receive precious gifts into the bargain.

Notes 

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64.

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking').

For the second of the White Stocking case studies - on Sam Adams as a Lothario who makes love to music - click here. 

For the third of the White Stocking case studies - on Ted Whiston as an abusive husband with a cuckold fetish - click here.

Siderodromophilia (A Post for Valentine's Day)

The Simpsons (S4/E15): 

Lisa's card to Ralph

I've written elsewhere on this blog about objectum sexuality with reference to the fascinating case of Erika Eiffel [click here]. But I don't believe I've specifically mentioned the love of trains, or siderodromophilia as it is known amongst those who are in the know.

So, since it's Valentine's Day - and since I'm always happy to discuss fetishistic forms of desire and kinky romantic attachment (which may or may not incude an erotic component) - I thought I'd get on board with this topic here and now, giving locomotive lovers their fifteen minutes of critical attention.

All siderodromophiles are, to a greater or lesser extent, physically excited by trains; be they life-sized engines or Hornby scale models; powered by steam or electricity; stationary or rattling along the tracks.

Some are aroused simply by images of trains, or films featuring trains - such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) or Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Others like to be actual passengers and achieve sexual gratification by fucking in a private compartment, or, rather less salubriously, in one of the toilets. As one siderodromophile of my acquaintance told me:

"Travelling in style and comfort on a sleeper train - with or without a partner - is always a highly sexual experience thanks to the gentle back-and-forth rocking motion and the clickety-clack sound of the wheels on the tracks. Who needs the Mile High Club?"

We should, I suppose, also mention those who get their thrills via non-consensual acts on trains, such as rubbing up against fellow passengers or indecently exposing themselves. Arguably, however, frottage - like exhibitionism - deserves to be analysed as a practice in and on its own terms and shouldn't be seen as in anyway an essential component of siderodromophilia.  

Finally, it's important to point out that this particular paraphilia is as old as the history of trains themselves - that it's certainly not something peculiar to our age. Thus, for example, we discover that the decadent anti-hero of Huysmans's magnificent novel À Rebours - published in 1884 - is, amongst other things, something of a siderodromophile.

Women, he concedes, are a natural wonder who possess "the most perfect and original beauty". But, having said that, there's nothing anywhere on this earth to compare to the dazzling and outstanding beauty of the two locomotives that have caught his eye:

"One of these ... is an adorable blonde with a shrill voice, a long slender body imprisoned in a shiny brass corset ... whose extraordinary grace can be quite terrifying when she stiffens her muscles of steel, sends the sweat pouring down her steaming flanks, sets her elegant wheels spinning in their wide circles and hurtles away, full of life, at the head of an express train.
      The other ... is a strapping saturnine brunette given to uttering raucous, gutteral cries, with a thick-set figure encased in armour-plating of cast iron; a monstrous creature with her dishevelled mane of black smoke and her six wheels coupled together low down, she gives an indication of her fantastic strength when, with an effort that shakes the very earth, she slowly and deliberately drags along her heavy train of goods-wagons."    

Des Esseintes concludes:

"It is beyond question that, among all the fair, delicate beauties and all the dark, majestic charmers of the human race, no such superb examples of comely grace and terrifying force are to be found ..."

The irony is, that, as a homotextual whose pleasure is derived from fine writing, even though I don't have the slightest interest in trains, I find these passages extremely arousing ... 

Happy Valentine's Day to lovers everywhere in all their splendidly queer difference!  

See: Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick, (Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 23-24. 

Surprise musical bonus: click here.  

A Birthday Post

Multi-wasp jumper (black)

A Child of the Jago

It's my birthday ...

But, if I'm honest, the receiving of a gift causes anxiety rather than the joy of anticipation: What lies behind the wrapping paper; "is it ugly, is it beautiful ... has it breasts, has it edges?" More to the point, can I return it without the receipt or bin it without the giver ever knowing?  

Unlike Sylvia Plath, I'm never so sure of the uniqueness of the object I'm being handed; uncertain that it'll be just what I always wanted. And unlike Sylvia, I would kind of like something special this year; I'll be pretty pissed off if I'm presented with some old bones, "or a pearl button".  

But how to ensure one receives the perfect present? 

The answer, of course, is to buy it yourself. That way, you always get exactly what you want from the person whom you love most ... In my case, a black woollen multi-wasp jumper from Child of the Jago, complete with an embroidered armband and a golden kilt pin to attach it to the sleeve.  

Happy Birthday - to me!

See: Sylvia Plath, 'A Birthday Present', Ariel, (Faber and Faber, 2010), pp. 42-44. Those who are interested can listen to Sylvia reading this verse on YouTube by clicking here.

It All Comes Down to Artifice in the End (Notes Towards a Decadent Floraphilia)

A rebours by Ink-Yami (2017-18)

deviantart.com 

I.

For me, Rupert Birkin is literature's greatest floraphile: a man who loves plants with a vital and perverse passion; a man for whom nothing satisfies like the subtle and responsive touch of cool vegetation upon his naked flesh - not even the love of a good woman. For whilst Birkin reluctantly returned to the human world and married Ursula, he always knew where he truly belonged and where he most wanted to deposit his sperm - in the folds of the delicious fresh growing leaves.

Click here for further details ...

II.

Just as perverse is the floraphilia of the aristocratic anti-hero of À Rebours: "Des Esseintes had always been excessively fond of flowers", writes Huysmans. However, unlike Birkin, he doesn't put his fondness into ecosexual practice and go rolling around wet hillsides, masturbating amidst a clump of young fir trees. Rather, Des Esseintes expresses his love of plants in a far more sophisticated and refined manner.

Des Esseintes is also discriminating amongst plants and doesn't embrace all flowers "without distinction of species or genus". In fact, he despises the "common, everyday varieties" that blossom in pots for sale at the local florist; "poor, vulgar slum-flowers [...] that are really at home only on the window-sill of a garret, with their roots squeezed into milk-cans or old earthenware pots".

Des Esseintes isn't too keen either on what he calls stupid flowers, such as the convential rose; flowers "whose proper place is in pots concealed inside porcelain vases painted by nice young ladies". In fact, whilst he can't help feeling "a certain pity for the lower-class flowers, wilting in the slums under the foul breath of sewers and sinks", he loathed the bourgeois blooms that one finds in "cream-and-gold drawing-rooms". Ultimately, Des Esseintes kept his admiration exclusively for the "rare and aristocratic plants from distant lands, kept alive with cunning attention in artificial tropics created by carefully regulated stoves".

But, best of all to his mind, are artificial hothouse flowers made from rubber, paper, or synthetic material: "As a result, he possessed a wonderful collection of tropical plants, fashioned by the hands of true artists ..." But of course, a Decadent is easily bored. And so, whilst enthralled by the admirable artistry displayed in his collection of künstliche Blumen, Des Esseintes begins to dream of another kind of flora: "tired of artificial flowers aping real ones, he wanted some natural flowers that would look like fakes."

This comically perverse acceleration of Decadent philosophy's anti-natural aesthetic all the way to its absurd conclusion - thereby reversing, as Patrick McGuinness points out, the relationship between nature and artifice, copy and original - is one of the most admirable aspects of À Rebours.       

Having soon assembled his astonishing collection of real fake flowers, including some remarkably sinister looking specimens that suggested disease and deformity rather than health and vital beauty, Des Esseintes is beside himself with joy:

"Yes, his object had been achieved: not one of them looked real; it was as if cloth, paper, porcelain and metal had been lent by man to Nature to enable her to create these monstrosities. Where she had not found it possible  to imitate the work of human hands, she been reduced to copying the membranes of animals' organs, to borrowing the vivid tints of their rotting flesh, the hideous splendours of their gangrened skin."

Fatigued by his horticultural handiwork and hothouse philosophizing, Des Esseintes goes to lie down on his bed. He soon falls asleep, but, alas, his sleep is disturbed "by the sombre fantasies of a nightmare", which concludes with an erotic encounter with an ashen-faced plant-woman, "naked but for a pair of green silk stockings". Her eyes gleamed ecstatically. Her lips had the crimson colour of an anthurium. And her nipples "shone as brightly as two red peppers".

As the dream intensifies, the plant-woman enfolds Des Esseintes in her tendril-like arms:

"He made a superhuman effort to free himself from her embrace, but with an irresistible movement she clutched him and held him, and pale with horror, he saw the savage Nidularium blossoming between her uplifted thighs, with its sword-blades gaping open to expose the bloody depths.
      His body almost touching the hideous flesh-wound of this plant, he felt life ebbing away from him - and awoke with a start, choking, frozen, crazy with fear."

I suspect that Birkin, in contrast to Des Esseintes with his eurotophobia and castration anxiety, would have been far more receptive to such a dream and would have awoken with blissful joy rather than a cold sweat.     

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 106-07.

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature (À Rebours), trans. Robert Baldick, introduction and notes by Patrick McGuinness, (Penguin Books, 2003), Ch. 8, pp. 82-92. 

For a related post to this one on Des Esseintes (and his bejewelled tortoise), click here.

Reflections on the Death of a Jewel-Encrusted Tortoise

The decadent aristocrat Des Esseintes, whose retreat into an increasingly perverse and artificial inner life is depicted with such brilliance by J-K Huysmans in the 1884 novel À rebours (a title usually translated into English as either Against the Grain or Against Nature), is - as Patrick McGuinness points out - a fictional character, but he is not pure invention:

"Among the specific models for Des Esseintes was the eccentric King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who designed an artificial forest with mechanical animals, but there were also Baudelaire himself, Edmond de Goncourt and a variety of fictional characters [...] The most obvious model, however, was Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, an aesthete and eccentric who provided the model for Proust's Baron Charlus in A la recherche du temps perdu ..."

Not only were many of the decorative elements of Des Esseintes's home based on details of Montesquiou's own, but the implausible figure of a jewel-encrusted tortoise creeping about Huysmans's novel was, outrageously, based on fact: "Montesquiou had the poor creature customized to his tastes, and when it died wrote a poem in its memory ..."

This certainly makes one read chapter four of Against Nature with a renewed fascination - and a greater sympathy - for the slow-moving beast:

"The tortoise was the result of a fancy which had occurred to him shortly before leaving Paris. Looking one day at an Oriental carpet aglow with iridescent colours [...] he had thought what a good idea it would be to place on this carpet something that would move about and be dark enough to set off these gleaming tints."  

Unfortunately, having purchased the tortoise and had it delivered to his home - and once it had been deposited on the carpet - it soon became apparent that "the negro-brown tint, the raw Sienna hue of the shell, dimmed the sheen of the carpet instead of bringing out its colours; the predominating gleams of silver had now lost nearly all their sparkle and matched the cold tones [...] along the edges of this hard, lustreless carapace".

Des Esseintes decides the only thing to do is to jazz the tortoise up a bit; to make it into a brilliant object (and artwork) in its own right; glazed in gold and encrusted with precious stones. But not just the familiar stones that vulgar people wear on their fingers; he wanted "startling and unusual gems " - both real and artificial - that, in combination, would "result in a fascinating and disconcerting harmony".

Job done - the tortoise suitably bejewelled - Des Esseintes felt perfectly happy and sat gazing at the splendid reptile as it lay "huddled in a corner of the dining room, glittering brightly in the half-light". Alas, his happiness doesn't last long as the tortoise dies: "Accustomed no doubt to a sedentary life, a modest existence spent in the shelter of its humble carapace, it had not been able to bear the dazzling luxury imposed upon it ..."

And people complain about the crushing effects of poverty!

Interestingly, there are faint echoes of this scene in Brideshead Revisited (1945), when Rex Mottram presents his fiancée Julia Flyte with a small tortoise that has her initials set in diamonds in the living shell. Unlike Des Esseintes, however, the narrator of Waugh's novel (Charles Ryder) can see that the bejewelled tortoise is slightly obscene and in poor taste.

In even poorer taste, however, is what children of my generation used to paint on the backs of pet tortoises; believing their shells to resemble the steel helmets of German soldiers, we would cheerfully decorate them with Iron Crosses and swastikas. And if there's anything more depressing than a dandified, decadent tortoise, it's a Nazified tortoise ...       

Notes

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick, (Penguin Books, 2003). Lines quoted are from Chapter 4, pp. 40-49. 

Patrick McGuinness, 'Introduction' to Against Nature, ibid., pp. xxvii-xxviii.  

Eveleyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, (Penguin Books, 2000). The tortoise scene is in Chapter 6. 

For a related post to this one written in memory of J-K Huysmans (and his jewel-encrusted tortoise), click here. 

Reflections on an Art Controversy (With Simon Solomon)

John William Waterhouse: Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) 
Oil on canvas (132 x 197.5 cm)
Manchester City Art Gallery

I.

The controversial decision by Manchester City Art Gallery working in collaboration with Black British artist Sonia Boyce to temporarily remove the well known and - so it would seem - still much-loved painting by J. W. Waterhouse depicting the story of a handsome Greek youth, Hylas, being seduced by a group of water nymphs in that slightly pervy but rather pedestrian pre-Raphaelite manner, caused a predictable shitstorm of reaction.    

And that, apparently, was the aim; to incite discussion and challenge the contemporary relevance of a Victorian fantasy belonging to the male porno-mythic imagination.

It certainly seems to be the line that Clare Gannaway, the gallery's curator of contemporary art, is holding fast to now that Waterhouse's masterpiece is hanging back on the wall. She insists that there was never any intention to censor or permanently remove a work that some today consider offensive and even obscene; suggesting as it does that the pubescent female body exists to serve a decorative and titilating function.

I have to admit, I'm slightly skeptical about this. One can't help feeling that Gannaway and Boyce were rather hoping to test public opinion and see how far they could go, or what they could get away with. Having said that, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the arguments advanced by both women and certainly don't think that any artwork is above critical contestation (though this is probably not best served by simply removing it from view and then inviting visitors to leave post-it notes in the empty space).    

My friend, the Dublin-based poet and scholar Simon Solomon, feels rather more strongly on this issue, however, and has posted a series of remarks on the gallery's website voicing his anger and making clear his contempt for Gannaway and Boyce. Generously, he's consented to my reposting below his latest piece on this ludicrous (though vitally important) affair, written in response to Boyce's article in The Guardian defending the takedown of Waterhouse's work as part of a performance piece of her own.


II.

"In Boyce's pursed-lipped piece of historical revisionism, the Waterhouse painting depicts 'seven long-haired, topless nymphs (pubescent girls)'. Is she really this offensively reactionary or is she being paid by Manchester Art Gallery to be? They are NYMPHS! As in alluring mythic/inhuman feminine entities in mortal garb. The Victorians didn't share our paranoiac, paedo-coated modern concept of pubescent in this domain, with all of its moralistic cultural anxiety. Boyce also seems suspiciously preoccupied with their exposed breasts for reasons best known to herself (of which more below) - presumably, she would feel better if they had been depicted in bathing suits, bloomers and caps. (Or just not depicted at all.)

Boyce then attempts to make the ridiculous case that, because other galleries do not display and/or store certain artworks at certain times for different reasons, the accusations of 'censorship' in this case against Manchester Art Gallery are ill-conceived - and even tries to imply we, as mere 'visitors', are extraordinarily lucky to have been invited into the discussion at all. We are then advised that the 'dialogue' that has been engendered (a dialogue she clearly feels she must resist) is composed by hate-filled simpletons looking for 'easy soundbites', driven by 'bigotry', and is misguidedly 'polarising'. (Even though the hundreds of posts I have read on the gallery blog have been, for the most part, stirring, educated and highly articulate, as well as, yes, angry and justifiably indignant.)

She asserts, as if it were self-evident, that 'judgment is at the heart of art'. The problem is this authoritarian statement is far from obvious. One could say - I would say - that being moved or disturbed, being ravished or silenced, is the alpha and omega of aesthetic feeling. Or falling in love with an image so hard one cannot forget it. [...] Unfortunately, for the likes of Boyce and Gannaway, classicism, monumentality, genius and mythic beauty are 'out', because art must fit modern demands for contemporary relevance, cultural inoffensiveness and whatever the #metoo generation is twittering about this week. Apparently, she also knows much more about these things than the Ancients, myth-makers and visionaries of our Western past.

There’s an ill-advised reference to Mengin's 1877 painting Sappho, in regard to which the first adjective she can tellingly find is that the subject is, once again, 'topless'. Apparently, this Sappho is not lesbian enough, among other things, for her retrospective/revisonist needs [...] and/or not evocative enough of Sappho’s cultural achievements. (The lyre that the subject is holding has apparently been overlooked by Boyce.)

What Boyce claims to celebrate is the contestability of art and its meanings. But she exposes her true agenda by telling us that the removal of the Waterhouse painting 'can' (read should) be seen in the 'context' (an hilarious irony, given her peerless deafness and blindness to Victorian context) of visitor-centred curatorial initiatives in Eindhoven and Middlesborough, in addition to conveying the spiteful and embittered reactions above that suggest people just aren’t sophisticated enough to attune themselves to her ideologically motivated cultural programme. The boot is so clearly on the other foot it’s embarrassing: a self-selecting elite - organised by fatuous/simplistic notions of binary gender, seduction and resentment of myth and history, topped off with puritanical outrage over bare-breasted images of femininity - hijacking art for politically driven ends. Against which hundreds of people, as invited, have now spoken eloquently, incisively and emphatically - not that, to read Boyce’s snookered, self-serving and bitter piece, you’d have realised this fact.

I do not wish art to be preserved in aspic and love the kind of baroque, life-loving and darkness-affirming criticism of feminist commentators such as Camille Paglia. I will also concede that Boyce makes a decent point about the modern hypocrisy of sometimes treating, say, myth differently from photography. But one reasonable claim hardly gets her off the dozens of hooks upon which she is rightly snagged.

The painting is back up ... and the egg is all over these imposters’ faces!"

Note: Simon Solomon can be contacted via simonsolomon.ink

In Memory of Joris-Karl Huysmans (and His Bejewelled Tortoise)

Caricature of J-K Huysmans (1885)

To be honest, I increasingly find that I have to be in a very particular frame of mind to read 19th-century French authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans who are a little too Symbolist, too Decadent and too Catholic for my tastes. One really has no wish to end up at the foot of the Cross, be it inverted or upright and I find elements of his philosophy - much influenced by Schopenhauer - highly suspect; suggestive as they are of weakness, rather than a more Nietzschean pessimism of strength. 

However, as Huysmans and I share the same star sign making us astrological kin - and as today happens to be the 170th anniversary of his birth - I thought I might say something in memory of this idiosyncratic writer, notorious for writing against the grain and against nature ...

The first thing that needs to be said is that Huysmans was clever - very clever. And I'm with Eliot on this question: the essential requirement of all good writing - be it prose or poetry - is intelligence. An inspired idiot is unfortunately still an idiot and inspiration won't compensate for (or disguise) a lack of learning and quick-wittedness for long. L'éternelle bêtise de l'humanité was not surprisingly one of Huysmans's pet peeves. 

His first major publication was a collection of prose poems, Le drageoir aux épices (1874), strongly influenced by Baudelaire. This was followed by a novel, Marthe, Histoire d'une fille (1876), which brought him to the attention of Émile Zola. His next works were similar in style: realistic and rather grim depictions of life in Paris.

Again, to be honest, you'd have to have a great passion for French literature or a scholarly interest like the middle-aged protagonist of Houellebecq's Submission (2015), to bother with these books. But on the other hand, his scandalous novel of 1884, À rebours, is a must read - if only for the bejewelled tortoise in chapter four. 

And that's particularly so for lovers of Oscar Wilde; for this poisonous tale of the aristocratic aesthete Jean des Esseintes - a man who rejects both the natural order and bourgeois society and attempts to live exclusively in a perversely sensual yet highly artificial world of his own invention - greatly influenced The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

Amusingly - though not for poor Constance - Wilde first read À rebours whilst on honeymoon in Paris and it immediately became for him what it was also for Paul Valéry and, many years later, the punk singer Richard Hell - a bible and bedside favourite.       

See:

Michel Houellebecq, Submission, trans. Lorin Stein, (William Heinemann, 2015). 

Joris-Karl Huysmans, trans. Robert Baldick, (Penguin Books, 2003).

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (Penguin Books, 2003).

To read an excellent essay by Adam Leith Gollner on 'What Houellebecq Learned from Huysmans', in The New Yorker (12 November, 2015), click here. 

For an interesting note on À rebours and its influence on Oscar Wilde, visit the British Library website: click here. 

For a related post to this one that reflects more closely on the bejewelled tortoise, click here.

Thanks to Thom Bonneville for suggesting this post.