On the Anguished Lyricism of E. M. Cioran

Emil Cioran - crazy hair, crazy guy!

I.

From out of the blue comes a book in the post: a copy of E. M. Cioran's On the Heights of Despair (1934), kindly sent to me by my friend and sometimes collaborator, the Dublin-based poet Simon Solomon ...

Originally published in his native Romania, this was Cioran's first book in which many of the themes and obsessions of his mature work are already foreshadowed. It might best be described as a series of existential meditations on death, suffering and life's absurdity, in which a young writer openly borrows some of Nietzsche's more theatrical poses and mystical clown's tricks.    

Unfortunately, however, Cioran isn't ever going to be my cup of tea. Even his translator, Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, concedes that he's a specialized taste - "too sharp and bitter for many palates and, paradoxically, too lyrical and funny for some others" - though I'm not entirely sure this explains my own aversion. 

After all, I'm perfectly happy with rancorous, darkly comic authors. So perhaps, then, it is the unrestrained lyricism; the fact that there's simply too much blood, sincerity, and fire within the pages for my tastes. If only Cioran had curbed his enthusiasm - and his rhetorical flourishes - I may have found this book easier to read and enjoy.      

Of course, I've no doubt that the self-professed barbarian and passionate young fascist who authored On the Heights of Despair would brand my unlyrical (and perhaps at times even anti-lyrical) call for the exercising of caution cowardly - a sign of my own sclerosis and hollow intellectualism.  

II. 

The vital importance of lyricism to Cioran in the above work is clear from the opening section, in which he roots it in what he terms inner fluidity or spiritual effervescence - the chaotic, unconscious turmoil of the deepest self. Lyricism is thus an outward expression of profound interiority:

"One becomes lyrical when one's life beats to an essential rhythm and the experience is so intense that it synthesizes the entire meaning of one's personality."

I don't know what that sentence means and it's not one I could ever imagine writing; not even in the throes of death or some other decisively critical experience, "when the turmoil of [my] inner being reaches paroxysm". In fact, such language and such thinking is antithetical to my substantial centre of subjectivity.

Thus, I'll just have to remain a stranger to myself and to reality; a loveless being, trapped in an impersonal bubble of objectivity and "living contentedly at the periphery of things", never knowing the lyrical virtues of suffering and sickness, but vegetating in scandalous insensitivity and sanity.  

For according to Cioran, just as there's no authentic lyricism without illness, nor is there absolute lyricism "without a grain of interior madness". Indeed, the value of the lyrical mode resides precisely in its delirious and savage quality; it knows nothing of aesthetics or cultural refinement and is utterly barbarian in its expression. 

Sounding more like Bataille than Bataille, Cioran concludes his vision of excess with the following:

"Absolute lyricism is beyond poetry and sentimentalism, and closer to a metaphysics of destiny. In general, it tends to put everything on the plane of death. All important things bear the sign of death."

As a thanatologist, I agree with this last statement. Only consciousness of death and of the fact that all being is a being toward death, isn't something that I find particularly troubling. In other words, whilst I might share Cioran's nihilism, I don't experience his intense anguish and black drunkenness.

I prefer a practice of joy before death, not a practice of misery (no matter how lyrical) ...

See: E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, (The University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Zoonosis (Revenge of the Animals)

Recent reports of the rare viral disease known as monkeypox recorded in the UK for the first time - first in Cornwall, then in Blackpool - oblige one to reconsider the question of zoonosis ...    

The term, zoonosis - from the Greek ζῷον (animal) and νόσος (sickness) - refers to the fact that some infectious diseases can naturally be transmitted between animals and humans. Examples include potentially deadly conditions such as Ebola, rabies, and salmonellosis, as well as the relatively mild - but still deeply unpleasant - monkeypox.

Many strains of swine and bird flu are zoonoses and HIV was originally a zoonotic disease transmitted to people in the early part of the 20th century from our simian friends, though it has since evolved to a separate human-only condition.

Despite the urban myth that infection with HIV was due to human-ape sexual contact, it was most likely due to the consumption of the latter served as bushmeat. Indeed, eating infected food is one of the most common modes of zoonotic transmission.

However, as zoonoses can be caused by a range of pathogens - viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites - there are numerous modes of transmission, both direct and indirect. Sometimes, this can involve a third party or intermediate species, known as a vector, which carries the disease without itself being infected; think mosquitoes and malaria. 

The fact is, like it or not, zoonotic transmission can occur in any context in which there is intimate contact with animals. Be they livestock, domestics pets, or wild creatures, they'll always find a way to undermine the health of man and extract a symbolic revenge upon a human order that treats them with disdain.  

On Art and Syphilis

Elizabethan Era Syphilis (detail)

by Swedish makeup artist 

Ylva Konradsson 

Even though, by his own admission, Lawrence knows "nothing about medicine and very little about diseases", that doesn't prevent him from offering a reading of English art history that is both critical and clinical in character and from assuming the role of what Nietzsche terms a cultural physician. 

Thus, in a fascinating late essay, Lawrence asserts that the reason the English produce so few painters is not because they are, as a people, "devoid of a genuine feeling for visual art", but because they are paralysed by fear. 

It is this which distorts Anglo-Saxon existence; an old fear which "seemed to dig into the English soul" during the Renaissance and that we might characterise as a morbid and mystical terror of sex and physical intimacy. The Elizabethans came to regard their own bodies with horror and began to privilege spiritual-mental life over instinctive-intuitive being.     

And, according to Lawrence, this was caused by the "great shock of syphilis and the realisation of the consequences of the disease" - particularly by the late-16th century when its "ravages were obvious" and, having initially entered the blood of the nation, it now "penetrated the thoughtful and imaginative consciousness". 

Someone, he suggests, ought to "make a thorough study of the effects of 'pox' on the minds and emotions and imagination of the various nations of Europe at about the time of our Elizabethans", who, despite their attempts to joke about the disease, were haunted by the fear of it. For the fact is "no man can contract syphilis, or any deadly sexual disease, without feeling the most shattering and profound terror go through him ... And no man can look without a sort of horror on the effects of a sexual disease in another person." 

I suspect that's probably true - and dare say many who experienced the outbreak of AIDS in the 1980s will agree. Like the arrival of syphilis, AIDS not only gave a "fearful blow to our sexual life", but the horror of it shaped our cultural imagination. We recoiled further and further away from one another - from physical communion - and into virtual reality (including online porn). 

Now we know know one another only as ideal entities on social media, or obscene online images; fleshless, bloodless, and cold. And our contemporary art reflects this great move into abstraction. It's often very clever, often very amusing, but it's real appeal is that it's germ-free.   

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Paintings', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 

Johannes Fabricius, Syphilis in Shakespeare's England, (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1994).

Arguably, the above book is the serious study Lawrence calls for and it lends support to his thesis concerning the manner in which syphilis profoundly changed the manners and morals of Renaissance Europe and shaped the literary and artistic imagination. Fabricius also suggests - as I have - that, in many ways, the emergence of syphilis has numerous parallels with the AIDS epidemic and the socio-political reaction to it. 

Susan Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors, (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1989). 

In this brilliant work of critical theory - a companion text to her earlier work Illness as Metaphor (1978) - Sontag extends her arguments made about the way in which cancer is culturally conceived to AIDS, deconstructing harmful myths surrounding the disease. Further, she also provides an interesting comparison between AIDS and syphilis    

The History of a Phone Box

When I was little, one of the things I loved to do was walk with my big sister to the phone box on Straight Road, where she went to call her boyfriend, Barry.

The box was one of those iconic dome-topped designs by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott; iron-cast, bright red in colour and emblazoned with a crown, and which, even until relatively recently, remained a familiar and reassuring sight on British streets. I'm not sure, but I think people with an interest in telephone kiosks refer to it as a K2 - but possibly it was the smaller, cheaper 1935 model, known as the K6.

In fact, it probably was the latter. But, either way, I thought it was a magical object (and space) as a six-year-old and enjoyed every aspect of helping my sister make a call; lifting the handset from its cradle, dialing, putting the pennies in the slot, hearing the pips go, etc. I even liked the fact that sometimes there would be someone waiting impatiently outside in the cold (less so if that someone was me).           

Sadly, post-privatisation in the 1980s, the traditional red phone box was gradually replaced by a ghastly-looking glass booth: the KX100. Nick Kane, Director of Marketing for BT Local Communications Services, announced that the old boxes had to go as they no longer met the needs of customers. Even more outrageously, he claimed the old boxes were not only expensive and difficult to clean and maintain, but unpopular with the public - something I refuse to believe.        

Today, of course, in this age of the mobile, even phone booths in the KX series have mostly vanished from our streets and those that remain are unloved relics in a state of disrepair or ruin, not even fit to piss in. This includes the one pictured above, standing where a handsome-looking red box once stood and made a young child happy.

Despite how it may appear, I'm not overly nostalgic for the past. But it has to be said that there's something brutal and charmless about life in Britain today, shaped by men like Nick Kane and company, who, as Lord Darlington would say, know the price of everything and the value of nothing.          

Larking About with Philip Larkin

The Larkin Toad by Frances Kelly 
Image: The Philip Larkin Society

I.

When it comes to how we view and remember our poets, I'm all for a certain irreverence. But I don't like caricatures that mock without affection; particularly if they also seem to display a poor reading of the author's work.

In other words, whilst a cruel misportrayal of a writer is objectionable, a crass misinterpretation of their text is unforgivable.  

And so we come to the case of Philip Larkin and his representation as a giant toad during Larkin 25 ...

II. 

2010 was the 25th anniversary of Larkin's death and an arts festival in Kingston-upon-Hull culminated on 2 December with the unveiling of a life-size bronze statue of the poet by Martin Jennings. The unveiling was accompanied by Nathaniel Seaman's Fanfare for Larkin, which had been specially composed to mark the occasion.

Although born in Coventry, Larkin had lived and worked (at the Brynmor Jones Library) in Hull from 1955 until his death thirty years later and the city had even named a bus in his honour, so fair enough that the good people thereof should regard him as one of their own and choose to celebrate his life.

However, I'm not sure the centrepiece of the festival is something they can look back on with pride: a work consisting of 40 fibre-glass toad sculptures, each painted with a unique design by a local artist and inspired - or so it's claimed - by Larkin's poetry. Central amongst the designs was The Larkin Toad, by Frances Kelly.

Even at the time, voices of concern were raised. It was said that were it possible for Larkin to have posthumous knowledge of himself reincarnated in bufonid form with dry, leathery skin and short, fat little legs, this would send him spinning in his grave. And Rachel Cooke wrote of the toad stunt that it was:

"so loopily against the spirit of the two poems that are their inspiration - 'Toads' and 'Toads Revisited', in which the squatting toad, impossible to shake off, is both a symbol of work and of the narrator's timid and confining personality - I find myself wondering whether their creators have actually read either one."

And that's the fatal criticism in my view; not that it mocks the man - in whom, by his own admission, something sufficiently toad-like squatted inside - but that it misunderstands (and sells short) his writing.  

Notes 

Rachel Cooke, 'In search of the real Philip Larkin', The Observer, (27 June 2010): click here to read online. 

'Toads' (1954) and 'Toads Revisited' (1962), by Philip Larkin, can be found in Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite, (Faber and Faber, 2003).  

For a sister post to this one - on why I love Larkin - click here. 

A Fond Farewell to Fenella Fielding

Fenella Fielding as the fiendishly beautiful Valeria

 Carry On Screaming (1966) 

It is again with sadness that I mark the passing of another wonderful comic actress - just days after the death of Liz Fraser - Fenella Fielding, star of my favourite Carry On film, Carry On Screaming (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1966). 

The exotic-looking and exotic-sounding Fenella was born in Hackney, in 1927, to a Romanian mother and a Lithuanian father, with whom she had an unhappy (often physically violent) relationship. Spending much of her childhood in conversation with her dolls, she dreamed of becoming an artist and performer from an early age (much to the horror of her parents who hoped she would become a shorthand typist).

After eventually fleeing her awful home life, Fielding found herself in an amateur production at the LSE playing alongside Ron Moody, who encouraged her in her ambition to become a professional actress. Soon, she began appearing regularly in various reviews and by the end of the 1950s she had made something of a name for herself as a beautiful butterfly of comedy.

Throughout the following decade, Fenella was an established figure in Swinging London: Vidal Sassoon did her hair; Jeffrey Bernard took her clubbing; Francis Bacon and friends were all enchanted. She appeared on TV (in The Avengers, for example) and on film alongside male co-stars including Dirk Bogarde and Tony Curtis.

On stage, meanwhile, she pursued her real passion - drama. An accomplished and versatile actress, Fielding captivated audiences and critics alike with her interpretations of Ibsen, Shakespeare and Euripides. Noel Coward and Fellini both regarded themselves as fans of this highly intelligent and amusing woman who kept a copy of Plato by her bedside.        

Of course, this aspect of her life and work has been fatally overshadowed by her role in Carry On Screaming. It is as smoking-hot Valeria wearing a fitted red velvet dress with plunging neckline, designed by Emma Selby-Walker, that she has entered the popular and pornographic imagination and will forever be remembered.

Serious performers and dramatists may not like it, but classical theatre, it appears, cannot compete with cinematic camp-vamp. And if the role of Valeria provided the kiss of death to Fielding's career, it also guaranteed her cinematic immortality.

I don't know if Fenella will be buried or cremated, but I kind of hope it's the latter, so she may smoke for one last time and the ghost of Orlando Watt might look on and cry: Frying tonight!  

Note: those who are interested might like to click here to watch Fenella in her most famous scene as Valeria in Carry on Screaming, alongside the brilliant Harry H. Corbett as Detective Sgt. Bung.

Why I Love Philip Larkin (The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post - 2018)

Portrait of Philip Larkin by gforce7 (1996)

deviantart.com 

There are many reasons to love Larkin - and doubtless just as many to hate him. 

Primarily, of course, is the body of work he left behind. Whatever the shortcomings of the man, these were more than compensated for - as if they needed to be - by the strength of his writing. He's unarguably one of our finest post-war poets, something which even most of his critics concede.

But I also love Larkin for his porno-fetishistic interests, his peculiarly English pessimism that is both ironic and understated, and the fact that he declined the honorary position of Poet Laureate when offered it in 1984 (having already turned down an OBE in 1968). A lyrical discontent, Larkin disliked fame and had no time for the trappings of success.       

And then - perhaps best of all - there's his love for Lawrence, whose work his father introduced him to and whom he regarded as the greatest of all English novelists throughout his life. Indeed, such was Larkin's devotion to DH that, according to his biographer, he even liked to mow his lawn whilst wearing a Lawrence t-shirt and drink his tea from a Lawrence mug.     

See: Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, (Faber and Faber, 1994). 

For a sister post to this one - on Larkin and the Larkin Toad - please click here. 

Save the Hedgehog

Photo: Tim Melling /Getty Images 

As a rule, I don't like the idea of saving anything, be it a whale, an immortal soul, or a sum of money. Whenever someone says we need to save this, that, or other, I always wonder from what and for what. It seems a slightly futile - if not ultimately a nonsensical - concept.

However, in the case of the hedgehog I'm willing to make an exception, because it's such an exceptional little beast; one of the earliest mammals and little changed in its spiny perfection for the last 15 million years. 

It also, of course, has a special place in the affections of the British; indeed, in a recent poll, it was voted our favourite wild species. But as author and journalist Tom Holland asks: If we love hedgehogs so much, why are we letting them vanish?

The answer, of course, is because we prefer to convert our gardens into driveways and eat McFlurries in a lifeless concrete world, sprayed with pesticide. We might anthropomorphically fantasise about Mrs Tiggy-Winkles, but we are supremely indifferent as a nation to the demise of the humble hedgehog, whose numbers have crashed dramatically over the past 20 years (down by over 30%).

Today, entire regions of the country are hedgehog-free zones. As Holland notes, an animal once ubiquitous in our fields, parks, and gardens is now facing extinction. It's a national shame: we encourage other peoples around the globe to protect their tigers, pandas, elephants and gorillas, but we can't even ensure the survival of our own small creatures. 

I wholeheartedly agree with Holland that we have an ethical duty to protect our wildlife; to be kind, while there is still time, as Larkin wrote in a mournful verse after accidently killing a poor hedgehog with his lawnmower.   

Notes

Tom Holland, 'If we love hedgehogs so much, why are we letting them vanish?', The Guardian (9 Sept 2018): click here to read online. 

Philip Larkin, 'The Mower', Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite, (Faber and Faber, 2003): click here to read on The Poetry Foundation website. 

For a related post to this one, on hedgehogs versus HS2, please click here.

Reflections on the Snail

Henri Matisse: L'Escargot (1953) 
Gouache on paper, cut and pasted on paper 
mounted on canvas

The Little Greek hates snails, because they eat her plants. But I like them ...

Perhaps it's because I grew up watching The Magic Roundabout and had a particular fondness for Brian. But it's also because, like other molluscs, they seem to me to be fascinating creatures, gastropodding about in the dampness of the garden and leaving a silvery slipstream of mucus in their wake, an ephemeral trail that points the way for the beaks of birds that love to eat them. 

The fact that snails have little tentacles on their head, a primitive little brain, and possess both male and female sex organs (i.e., are hermaphrodites), also inclines me to view them favourably; they are both alien and perverse when considered from a human perspective. 

I particularly like the tiny baby snails, newly hatched, with a small and delicate shell already in place to conceal their nakedness. They are very pretty and very sweet. Francis Ponge speaks of their immaculate clamminess. The fact that people can kill them with poison pellets without any qualms is astonishing and profoundly upsetting to me. 

To her credit, the Little Greek only tries to dissuade the snails from eating her plants by using (mostly ineffective) organic solutions, such as coffee granules and bits of broken eggshell sprinkled around. Alternatively, she sometimes rounds 'em up and relocates the snails to the local woods - though this enforced transportation of snails also makes me a little uneasy, as it's all-too-easy to imagine little yellow stars painted on their backs.   

Not that this prevents me from eating them, prepared with a garlic and parsley butter when in France, or cooked in a spicy sauce when in Spain ... 

Note: the Francis Ponge poem to which I refer and from which I quote is 'Snails', trans. by Joshua Corey and Jean-Luc Garneau, Poetry, (July/August, 2016). Click here to read in full on the Poetry Foundation website.  

In Memory of Liz Fraser

Liz Fraser in Carry On Cruising (1962)

I was very sorry to hear of the passing two days ago of busty British beauty and much-loved Carry On star Liz Fraser, aged 88.

As I wrote in an earlier post, any film in which she appeared is instantly improved, even if, sadly, not always worth watching, and seeing Liz in her black underwear always makes happy and nostalgic. She had the serious erotic charisma that Barbara Windsor, for all her infectious giggling, completely lacks and was undoubtedly one of the great comedic actresses of her generation and one of the smartest of all dumb blondes. 

For anyone like me who loves TV of the sixties and seventies, it's impossible not to think fondly of Miss Fraser, who had roles in many classic shows, including: Hancock's Half  Hour, Dad's Army, The Avengers, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).    

And anyone like me who loves the Sex Pistols, will also recall that, like Irene Handl and Mary Millington, she also pops up in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

Thus, with her place in the popular cultural (and pornographic) imagination happily secure, she can, I hope and trust, rest in peace. 


Note: the earlier post I refer to above is 'Why I Love Carry On Cruising' (2 Jan 2017): click here.