Towards a Synthetic Nativity

 

O come, all ye cyborgs, joyful and triumphant 

O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem 

 

 

Whilst looking at a piss-poor picture of the Nativity printed on the front of a crappy Christmas card, it occurred to me that whilst she certainly had problems of her own to deal with, one thing that the Blessed Virgin Mary didn't have to worry about was the presence of microplastics in her placenta. 

 

But that's now a very real issue for pregnant women presently awaiting (like the Blessed Virgin Zena) to give birth ...

 

For scientists have discovered a range of synthetic materials in tissue samples taken from new mothers in Italy and described this as a matter of great concern (even though at this stage the effect that the tiny particles may have is unknown and the women who took part in the study had no complications during pregnancy or with the births of their bei bambani) [1].

 

The fear is that chemicals found in the microplastics - which are small enough to be transported in the bloodstream - could damage the immune system of a developing foetus; or that we'll end up inadvertently creating a race of cyborg babies composed of human cells and inorganic elements. 

 

The research team, led by Dr. Antonio Ragusa, found microplastic fragments in two-thirds of the placentas sampled - and the fact that they only sampled 3% of the donated tissue suggests it's not just microplastic ocean pollution that should trouble us [2] ... 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The research is published in the scientific journal Environment International, Vol. 146 (Jan. 2021). The article, entitled 'Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta', by Antonio Ragusa et al, can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[2] Last year, over 320 million tons of plastic was manufactured and over 40% of this was used in single-use packaging.

 

On the Sex Life of Robinson Crusoe 3: Becoming the Perverted Sun Angel

Edvard Munch: The Sun (1910-11)
Photo © Munchmuseet

 

O Sun, deliver me from the pull of gravity! 

Is my transformation not sufficiently in the manner of your own radiance?

 

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Everything starts and finishes with the sun [a]. 

 

No surprises then that Michel Tournier's Robinson Crusoe [b] should eventually abandon all terrestrial forms of love, weighed down as they ultimately are by the spirit of gravity, and seek to discover the solar sexuality that lies beyond; learning to walk, as Lawrence would say, in his own sun-glory with bright legs and uncringing buttocks [c].     

 

In a sense, Crusoe effects a becoming-minoritarian [d]. Dissatisfed with his own sombre and melancholy white face, he prays to his new god:

 

"O Sun, cause me to resemble Friday. Give me Friday's smiling countenance, his face shaped for laughter. [...] The eyes in which there is always a hint of derision, a touch of mockery [...] The curved, avid, animal mouth with its uptilted corners." [202-03]

 

At other times, he observes his negro companion with crazed intensity, marvelling at his physical presence and otherness:

 

"I watch Friday as he walks toward me with his untroubled, steady pace over the shining sand of the lagoon [...] 

      Shall I ever learn to walk like him with his natural majesty? Do I sound absurd if I say that he seems clothed by his nakedness? He carries his body like a sovereign affirmation, he bears himself like a monstrance of flesh. His animal beauty proclaims itself, seeming to create a nothingness around it." [205-06]      

 

Friday has grace, as well as rippling muscles and strong knees. He is one of those solar aristocrats that Lawrence dreams of, drawing his nobility and his strength directly from the sun. Watching Friday emerge one day from the ocean, Crusoe admires the "gleam of  wet, firm flesh" [210] which brings to mind thoughts of Venus rising from the waves. He is quick to note in his Journal, however, "that at no time has Friday inspired me with sodomite desire" [211].

I don't know if that's true. But Crusoe makes an interesting case to support his denial of homosexual feelings:

"For one thing, he came too late, when my sexuality had already become elemental and was directed toward Speranza. But above all, Venus, or Aphrodite, did not emerge from the waves and tread my shores in order to seduce me, but to drive me into the realm of her father, Uranus, the 'sky crowned with stars' [...] It was not a matter of turning me back to human loves but, while leaving me still an elemental, of causing me to change my element. This has now happened. My love affair with Speranza was still largely human in its nature; I fecundated her soil as though I were lying with a wife. It was Friday who brought about the deeper change. The harsh stab of desire that pierces the loins of the lover has been transformed for me into a soft jubilation which exalts and pervades me from head to foot, so long as the sun-god bathes me in his rays. There is no longer that loss of substance which leaves the animal, post coitum, sad. My sky-love floods me with vital energy which endows me with strength during an entire day and night. If this is to be translated into human language, I must consider myself feminine and the bride of the sky. But that kind of anthropomorphism is meaningless. The truth is that at the height to which Friday and I have soared, difference of sex is left behind. Friday may be identified with Venus, just as I may be said, in human terms, to open my body to the embrace of the sun." [211-12]

 

Whatever you may think of this passage, dear reader, I think you'll admit it's an interesting one - not least of all because it offers us a model of sex that is solar in origin and "so much more than phallic, and so much deeper than functional desire" [e]. It's a model that feminises Crusoe and gives him a tantric experience of sex involving semen retention and non-localised orgasm, allowing solar-sexual energy to radiate throughout his entire body.   

 

I think it's Deleuze who best understands what it is Tournier is attempting to do in his novel and where Crusoe's process of dehumanization leads; namely, "the discovery of a cosmic energy or of a great elemental Health" [f]. 

 

Anyway, shortly after this, a ship arrives at the island of Speranza and, after twenty-eight years, it seems that Crusoe might finally be rescued ... But, of course, having become a sun-man or solar-aristocrat, there's no going back and he finds the company of the ship's captain and crew nauseating:

 

"What principally repelled him was not so much the coarse brutality, the greed and animosity that emerged so clearly [...] It was easy to imagine encountering men of a different stamp, mild-mannered, benevolent, and generous. For Robinson the evil went deeper, and he defined it to himself as the incurable pettiness of the ends to which all men feverishly devoted their lives." [224]  

 

These men had no conception of or reationship with the sun; for them, it was just a bright light in the sky or a big ball of flame. How could they know of the sun "as possessing a spirit that could irridiate with eternity those who had learned to open their hearts to it?" [224] 

 

One might paraphrase Lawrence at this point: 

 

"With [his] knowledge of the sun, and [his] conviction that the sun was gradually penetrating [him] to know [him], in the cosmic carnal sense of the word, came over [him] a feeling of detachment from people, and a certain contemptuous tolerance for human beings altogether. They were so un-elemental, so un-sunned. They were so like graveyard worms." [g]

 

That's almost exactly how Crusoe felt. So no surprise then that he chooses to stay on his island (although Friday, moving in the opposite direction, decides to leave aboard the ship):

"The truth was that he was younger today than the pious and self-seeking young man who had set sail in the Virginia, not young with a biological youth, corruptible and harbouring the seeds of its decrepitude, but with a mineral youth, solar and divine. Every day was for him a first beginning [...] Beneath the rays of the sun-god, Speranza trembled in an eternal present, without past or future. |He could not forsake that eternal instant, poised at the needle point of ecstasy, to sink back into a world of usury, dust, and decay." [226]

 

And so Crusoe returns to Speranza and enjoys a new sunrise:

 

"Drawn up to his full height, he was confronting the solar ecstasy with a joy that was almost painful, while the bright splendour in which he bathed washed him clean of the grime of the past day and nigt. A blade of fire seemed to penetrate his flesh, causing his whole being to tremble. Speranza was shedding her veil of mist, to emerge unsullied and intact. Indeed, it was as though the agony and the nightmare had never taken place. Eternity, reasserting its hold on him, had effaced that ugly but trivial interlude. He drew a deep breath, filled with a sense of utter contentment, and his chest swelled like a breastplate of brass." [234]   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] I think I first said this in a Treadwell's paper entitled 'Sun-Fucked: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence' (2012). An extract from this essay can be found in a post on Torpedo the Ark: click here. Or you can find a revised and edited version of the text published in full on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage by clicking here. This being the case, I'll not attempt to summarise the essay or incorporate ideas from it here, though it should be noted that I express a much less golden-rosy view of solar sexuality than either Tournier or Lawrence.   

 

[b] Michel Tournier, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique (Éditions Gallimard,1967). The text I'm using here is the English translation, simply entitled Friday, trans. Norman Denny, (John Hopkins University Press, 1997). All page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun-men', in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 456. This is one of a series of related poems; see also 'Sun-women', 'Democracy, 'Aristocracy of the sun', 'Conscience', and Immorality', ibid., pp. 456-58.    

[d] Becoming-minoritarian is a philosophical concept developed by Deleuze and Guattari. In a molecular nutshell, it's an attempt to abandon molar configurations of identity (i.e., escape the face) and resist the predominant norms enforced by a majoritarian state machine. It can involve a becoming-woman, becoming-animal, or, indeed, as in this case, a becoming-negro. Each of these affective becomings involves deterritorialization and a constant process of change; they do not involve pretence, posing, or imitation. It's important to understand that Crusoe is not simply an 18th-century wigger attempting to emulate Friday and steal his style. Nor is he erotically fetishising Friday's blackness - although, at times, it might seem that way - and has no desire to either fuck or be fucked by the latter.

 

[e] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Novel', Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 189.  

 

[f] Gilles Deleuze, 'Michel Tournier and the World Without Others', in The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, (The Athlone Press, 1990), Appendix II, section 4, p. 303.  

      This notion of die große Gesundheit is, of course, taken from Nietzsche, who writes of "a new health, stronger, more seasoned, tougher, more audacious, and gayer than any previous health". See The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), Section 382.  

[g] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 23-24.     

 

To read part one of this post - on Crusoe's dendrophilia - click here. 

 

To read part two of this post - on Crusoe's ecosexuality - click here. 

 

 

On the Sex Life of Robinson Crusoe 2: The Man Who Married the Earth (and Sired Mandrakes)

Illustration from De Materia Medica (1460)

by Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides

 

As we discovered in part one of this post, a bite from a red-spotted spider is enough to put any man off placing his penis inside a mossy hole in a tree, no matter how inviting the prospect is: click here.

 

However, this painful experience didn't stop Michel Tournier's reimagined Robinson Crusoe [a] from further experimenting with what is now known as ecosexuality; i.e., an eroticised form of nature worship [b]. In fact, following this incident Crusoe learns how to love his island as a whole and to conceive of the Earth as a living entity [c]. 

 

Awaking one day from an al fresco nap, he feels full of a queer new tenderness for Speranza:

 

"He felt as never before that he was lying on Speranza as though on a living being, that the island's body was beneath him. Never before had he felt this with so much intensity, even when he walked barefoot along the shore that was teeming with so much life. The almost carnal pressure of the island against his flesh warmed and excited him. She was naked, this earth that enveloped him, and he stripped off his own clothes. Lying with arms outstreched, his loins in turmoil, he embraced that great body scorched all day by the sun, which now exuded a musky sweat in the cooler air of the evening. He buried his face in the grass roots, breathing open-mouthed a long, hot breath. And the earth responded, filling his nostrils with the heavy scent of dead grass and the ripening seed, and of sap rising in new shoots. How closely and how wisely were life and death intermingled at this elemental level! His sex burrowed like a plowshare into the earth, and overflowed in immense compassion for all created things. A strange wedlock, consummated in the vast solitude of the Pacific! He lay exhausted, the man who had married the earth, and it seemed to him, clinging timorously like a small frog to the skin of the terrestrial globe, that he was swinging vertiginously with her through infinite space." [119-120]

 

That's a lovely piece of writing, reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence; one thinks of Birkin's marriage to the vegetation in Women in Love [click here]. 

 

Later, Crusoe discovers a "gently rolling meadow broken by folds and slopes and dressed in a covering of round-stemmed, pink-tinted grass" [120] that excites his interest and in which he deposits his sperm, thereby accomplishing a further stage in the metamorphosis he is undergoing. 

 

Now, according to the Freudian definition of the term, Crusoe - as one who deviates with respect to aims - is a sexual pervert. But Crusoe, however, sees things a little differently. Writing in his journal, he decides that were it not for a social mechanism directing a man's sex exclusively to the vagina of a woman, he would naturally allow it to return to its original source - Mother Earth.      

 

And to those who might protest that nothing can be born of such an incestuous union ... 

 

Nearly a year later, Crusoe "perceived that his love was bringing about a change in the vegetation of the pink coomb" [128]. At first, he had taken no notice of this, but then his attention was caught by the growth of a new plant that he hadn't seen anywhere else on the island:

 

"The plant had large, lace-edged leaves which grew in clusters at the level of the earth on a very short stalk. It bore white, sharp-scented blossoms with pointed petals and brown, ample berries which largely overflowed their calyxes.

      Robinson observed them with curiosity, but thought no more about them until the day when it became unmistakably apparent that they appeared within a few weeks at the precise place where he had sown his seed. Thereafter he ceaselessly pondered the mystery. He sowed his seed in the earth near the cave, but to no avail. It seemed that these plants could grow nowhere but in the pink coomb. Their strangeness restrained him from plucking them and dissecting and tasting them, as he might otherwise have done." [129]   

 

It's at this point in the text that ecosexuality gives way to Jewish mysticism concerning the mandrake, as Crusoe recalls a verse from the Song of Songs: The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. [d]    

 

"Could it be that Speranza was keeping that bibical promise? He had heard of the miracle of the plants, such as nightshade, which grow at the foot of gibbets, where the hanged have let fall their last drops of semen, and which are held to be the fruit of the crossing of man with earth. On the day when this thought occurred to him, he ran to the pink coomb and, kneeling beside one of the plants, very gently lifted it out of the ground, digging round the root with his hands. It was true! His love-making with Speranza was not sterile. The white, fleshy, curiously forked root bore an undeniable resemblance of the body of a woman-child. Trembling with delight and tenderness, he put the mandrake back, and pressed the earth around it as one puts a child to bed. Then he walked away on tiptoe, taking great care not to crush any of the other plants. 

      Thenceforward, blessed by the Bible, a stronger and more intimate bond united him with Speranza. [...] That this closer union represented a further step in the shedding of his human self was something of which he was certainly aware, but he did not measure its extent until he perceived, when he awoke one morning, that his beard, growing in the night, had begun to take root in the earth." [129-130]  

 

I can't imagine what Daniel Defoe - author of an asexual Crusoe - would make of all this. And I don't really care. For me, Tournier has produced an astonishing novel in which, as Deleuze notes, the isle of Speranza is as central to the story as Crusoe himself [e]. 

 

However, as we shall see in part three of this post, Crusoe's relationship with the island is not the end of his story and strange-becoming. How could it be? For as he himself recognises, his "love affair with Speranza was still largely human in its nature" [212]; he inseminated her body as though he were still lying with a woman. 

 

There has to be more than this; one has to be able to go still further; one has to discover at last that beyond all forms of terrestrial sexuality - forever subject to the spirit of gravity - lies solar sexuality ...    

 

Notes

 

[a] Michel Tournier, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique (Éditions Gallimard,1967). The text I'm using here is the English translation, simply entitled Friday, trans. Norman Denny, (John Hopkins University Press, 1997). All page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.   

 

[b] I have written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark about ecosexuality: click here and here, for example. I think it's fair to say I mostly regard it as a morally conventional, all-too-human form of hippie idealism masquerading as queer ecology. Ultimately, I prefer my own model of floraphilia as a form of perverse materialism. That said, since it's Christmas week, lots of love and best wishes to Beth and Annie.      

 

[c] This idea is, of course, a very old one and in Crusoe's time even respectable scientists still believed the Earth to be alive or some kind of superorganism. This view eventually fell from favour, however, and, as a Nietzschean, I'm highly suspicious of attempts to revive it. For whilst it's true that Nietzsche champions the sovereignty and sanctity of the Earth, I would refer those who would absorb his philosophy into their own system of environmental ethics or eco-vitalism to The Gay Science, III. 109, in which he instructs us to always remain on our guard against thinking that the world (and/or the universe) is a living being. 

 

[d] I'm quoting from the King James Version of the Bible, Song of Songs 7:13. 

      It should be noted that it wasn't just the ancient Jews who were fascinated by the mandrake. Because its roots have hallucinogenic properties and often resemble a human figure, they have been associated with a variety of superstitious practices and beliefs throughout history and are still regarded as sacred plants within contemporary pagan circles.       

 

[e] See Gilles Deleuze, 'Michel Tournier and the World Without Others', in The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, (The Athlone Press, 1990), Appendix II, section 4, pp. 301-321. A brilliant reading of Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique as one would expect. 

 

 

The third and final part of this post on the sex life of Robinson Crusoe - sun-fucked - can be read by clicking here.

 

 

On the Sex Life of Robinson Crusoe 1: Getting Jiggy with a Soap Bark Tree

Even a tree has its own daimon. 

And a man might lie with the daimon of a tree. 

- D. H. Lawrence 

 

 

I. 

 

As regular readers will know, dendrophilia has featured in several posts on Torpedo the Ark, including, most recently, one in which I discuss an illustration by Wallace Smith for Ben Hecht's controversial novel Fantazius Mallare (1922): click here. 

 

However, as you can never have too much of a wood thing, I thought I might share details of the happy liaison between Michel Tournier's reimagined Robinson Crusoe [a] and a fallen soap bark tree (Quillaja saponaria) ...    

 

 

II.

 

With time on his hands, Crusoe develops many new interests. Among these, is an interest in the "marital rites of the creatures surrounding him" [113]. Not the mammals and birds, "whose couplings seemed to him a repulsive caricature of human love" [113], but the insects. 

 

He was particularly fascinated by the role the latter play in pollination, a process that seemed to him "both moving and supremely elegant" [113] and he spent many long hours observing the queer relationship that existed between a wasp and an orchid [b]. 

 

This "wonderful mingling of subterfuge and ingenuity" [115], makes him not only reconsider his religious beliefs - "had the natural world been contrived by an infinitely wise and majestic God, or by a baroque Demiurge driven to the wildest whimsicalities by his love of the bizarre?" [115] - but also wonder whether there were trees on the island which "might be disposed to make use of himself" [115] in a similar manner that the orchid exploits the wasp ...

 

Suddenly, "the branches of the trees were transformed in his mind into voluptuous and scented women whose rounded bodies were waiting to receive him" [115]. And so Crusoe sets off to find a suitable lover:     

"Searching the island from end to end, he finally discovered a quillai tree, which had been blown over by the wind but not wholly uprooted. The trunk, which lay on the ground, ended in a fork of two main branches rising a little into the air. The bark was smooth and warm, even downy at the point of the fork, where there was a small aperture lined with silky moss.

      Robinson hesitated for some days on the threshold of what he later called his 'vegetable way'. He hung about the quillai with sidelong glances, discovering in the two branches thrusting out of the grass a resemblance to huge, black, parted thighs. Finally he lay naked on the tree, clasping the trunk with his arms while his erect penis thrust its way into that mossy crevice. A happy torpor engulfed him. He lay dreaming with half-closed eyes of banks of creamy-petaled flowers shedding rich and heady perfumes from their bowed corollas. With damp lips parted they seemed to await the gift to be conferred on them by a heaven filled with the lazy drone of insects. Was he the last member of the human race to be summoned to return to the vegetative sources of life? The blossom is the sex of the plant. Innocently the plant offers its sex to all as its most rare and beautiful possession. Robinson lay dreaming of a new human species which would proudly wear its male and female attributes on its head - huge, luminous, scented." [115-116]

 

Alas, this blissful life is fated not to last beyond several happy months. First the rains come. Then a spider ruins everything: for one day, as he lay spread upon the wooden body of his beloved soapbark, "a searing pain in his gland brought him sharply to his feet" [116] and he spotted a large red spider running along the trunk of the tree before vanishing into the grass. "It was some hours before the pain abated, and his afflicted member looked like a tangerine." [116] 

 

Ouch! Perhaps not surprisingly, this incident puts Crusoe off dendrophilia: 

 

"Robinson had suffered many misadventures during his years of solitude amid the flora and fauna of a world enfevered by the tropical sun. But the moral significance of this episode was unavoidable. Although it had been caused by the sting of a spider, could his malady be regarded as anything other than a venereal disease [...]? He saw in this a sign that the 'vegetable way' might be no more than a blind alley." [116] 

 

That's a shame - and I think this an absurd reading of what happened. However, it has the significant effect of transforming Crusoe from a dendrophile into a full-blown ecosexual, as we will see in part two of this post ... [click here].    

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Michel Tournier, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique (Éditions Gallimard,1967). The text I'm using here is the English translation, simply entitled Friday, trans. Norman Denny, (John Hopkins University Press, 1997). All page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.

      The subject of Crusoe's sexual life whilst on his island has intrigued many authors. Diana Souhami, for example, wrote an award-winning study of Alexander Selkirk, the real-life castaway whose story inspired Daniel Defoe, in which she cheerfully speculated on his masturbatory habits and erotic preferences, ranging from buggery to bestiality. What she doesn't suggest, however, is that Selkirk/Crusoe may also have been a tree-hugger, in the carnal sense. If you want to know about that, you have to read Tournier's novel.

      See Diana Souhami, Selkirk’s Island, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001). Best-known for her unconventional biographies of famous lesbians, this book was perhaps a bit of a surprise for Souhami's readership. Combining elements of fiction and fantasy with fact, it is difficult to categorise as a work. It should probably be noted, however, that Selkirk's own memoirs contain no hint of impropriety with goats.  

[b] Gilles Deleuze, who praised Tournier's novel - suggesting that it traced a genesis of perversion - would later, in collaboration with Félix Guattari, use this double figure of the wasp and orchid to illustrate the concepts of rhizome, becoming, and deterritorialization. Like Crusoe, Deleuze and Guattari were fascinated by the manner in which certain orchids display the physical and sensory characteristics of female wasps in order to entice male wasps into unnatural relations and co-opt them into their own reproductive cycle. 

      See Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux (1980), trans. into English as A Thousand Plateaus by Brian Massumi, (University of Minnesota Press, 1987). The material I refer to is in the Introduction: Rhizome. As far as I am aware, Tournier has never received the credit he is due for initiating this line of thinking; indeed, there is but a single reference to Tournier in A Thousand Plateaus (p. 261) and this quotes from his later novel Les Météores (1975), not Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique. 

      However, Deleuze did write a lengthy essay on the latter, which was published as 'Michel Tournier and the World Without Others' in an appendix to The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, (The Athlone Press, 1990), pp. 301-321. 

 

 

The third and final part of this post on the sex life of Robinson Crusoe - sun-fucked - can be read by clicking here.  

 

 

On Things That Go Bump in the Theatrical Night

Misha Fitzgibbon in The Atonement of Lesley Ann 

by Síomón Solomon
Photo by Anna McLoughlin

 

 

Ghosts have been an integral part of drama since ancient Greece and, arguably, the theatre itself is an inherently uncanny space; one that evokes all kinds of feelings, memories, and spirits, etc. 

 

So I was pleased to see that Irish playwright Síomón Solomon made a spectral figure central to his work The Atonement of Lesley Ann, which premiered on February 15th at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, as part of the Scene and Heard Festival (2020), directed by Larissa Brigatti and starring the young actress Misha Fitzgibbon [1].      

 

Of course, there are critics and theatregoers who roll their eyes whenever a ghost appears on stage and feel that supernatural elements detract from the seriousness and realism of a work. Indeed, for such people, there is the danger also that otherworldly apparitions unintentionally give rise to comedy and cause sniggering rather than induce terror.       

Others just find ghosts on stage old-fashioned; it reminds them too much of Victorian theatre which developed much of the technical trickery still used to scare us, such as the phantasmagoria, for example; "a spooky magic lantern show in which images of the dead, projected onto smoke, loomed menacingly over the spectators. To make the effect even more chilling, the audience sat in the dark for the first time ever in the British theatre, the spectres floating out of the black towards them." [2]

 

But, as I say, I was glad to see Solomon - whose interest in and knowledge of all things that go bump in the night is extensive - have the courage to write the work he wanted to write and ignore those who told him to reconsider (i.e. abandon) the more occult elements and root the play firmly in the real world. 

 

Such critical advice may be well-intentioned - it may even be very sensible - but, in my view, it entirely misses the point of what Solomon is attempting to do in this genre-defying and daringly experimental work. Sure, he could exorcise the ghost and remove the poetry and, yes, that would simplify things; but sometimes less is not more, it is simply less (as in less imaginative, less, intelligent, and less interesting).

       

My hope is that The Atonement of Lesley Ann will one day receive the full-production, wide audience, and critical acclaim that it deserves.

 

 

Notes  

 

[1] It might be noted that, although young, Miss Fitzgibbon was - against the author's own wishes - significantly older than the murdered ten-year-old whose terrible case the work is based on. Whilst I understand there are issues surrounding the casting of minors in works that deal with adult themes, by not using a child in the lead it's undeniable that some of the shock value and horror of the story is lessened. 

 

[2] Sophie Nield, 'Theatre of screams: on ghosts and drama', The Guardian (1 Nov 2010), click here. 

 

 

For additional thoughts on The Atonement of Lesley Ann, click here. And for still further thoughts, click here. 

 

   

A Brief Note on the Black Beethoven Controversy

Terry Adkins: still image taken from the video Synapse (2004)

Part of the Black Beethoven series of works

 

 

Chris Tomlinson at Breitbart is getting his knickers in a twist due to the fact that the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels has chosen to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth by posting a portrait of the composer as imagined by the American artist Terry Adkins [1].

 

Readers are expected to be outraged at this woke attempt to blackwash European cultural history, but, really, this (supposed) controversy about Beethoven's racial origin or ethnicity is old news [2] and even the video by Adkins from which the still is taken was made sixteen years ago. So, unless one subscribes to some kind of sinister anti-white conspiracy theory, it's hard to get too worked up about this ... 

 

What's more, I quite like the image and whilst I don't know how seriously Adkins took the myth of Beethoven's blackness, I can see why it would intrigue and amuse him and suspect he just wanted to have some fun with it - not least of all in order to piss off overly-sensitive white folk, like Chris Tomlinson [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Chris Tomlinson, 'Woke Art Centre Celebrates Beethoven Birthday with Portrait of Composer as a Black Man', Breitbart (18 December, 2020): click here. 

 

[2] As Alexander Carpenter notes: "Beethoven being of African descent is not a new idea: the notion of the great composer's secret ethnicity has circulated at the fringes of the media and scholarship for more than a century." See his excellent article 'Was Beethoven Black? A Twitter meme reveals more about race and music than the composer’s origins', on The Conversation website (30 July, 2020): click here. 

 

[3] It's important to also note - as Kanitra Fletcher reminds us - that Adkins often re-examined the lives of historical figures in his work - not just white German composers - in order to uncover neglected details and question the processes by which people are celebrated, remembered negatively, or simply forgotten about. Thus he wasn't just trying to be playful and provocative with his Black Beethoven series. And ultimately, of far more interest to Adkins than this myth of Beethoven's blackness, was the triumph of the composer in overcoming his deafness to create some of the world's most powerful music. See Fletcher's article on Adkins on the Landmarks website: click here.

 

Crawling on All Fours in Shaggy Inhumanity ...

William Blake: Nebuchadnezzar (c. 1795-1805)

tate.org.uk

 

 

I. The Case of King Nebuchadnezzar

 

Most people are probably vaguely familiar with the figure of King Nebuchadnezzar who, if the Bible is to be believed, was deprived of his mind by God and forced to live like an animal as punishment for excessive pride or hubris. The fact that he destroyed Solomon's Temple and held God's chosen people captive probably didn't go down well either [1]. 

 

William Blake famously produced a large colour print depicting this Babylonian monarch reduced to the status of a mad beast. As can be seen, he looked pretty rough during this seven year period; almost like some sort of werewolf. Alexander Gilchrist writes that the picture shows Nebuchadnezzar: 

 

"crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity, and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet." [2]

 

Happily for Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of the septennium he is restored to sanity and full human status - indeed, he even gets his kingdom back, having learned his lesson, so all's well that ends well in his case ...     

 

 

II. The Case of Robinson Crusoe

 

Despite what naturists may choose to believe, I'm not convinced there's anything positive to be gained from the experience of nudity; I certainly don't think that running about with your kit off in the woods or on the beach, makes you essentially healthier, happier, or more vital. 

 

Having stripped off his clothes in a heavy shower of rain, Robinson Crusoe later muses on this question of nakedness and the importance of garments: 

 

"It was true that neither the temperature nor any consideration of modesty required him to go about dressed in a civilized manner. Sheer habit had caused him to do so, but now in his despair he began to appreciate the value of that armour of wool and linen with which human society had hitherto protected him. Nakedness is a luxury in which a man may indulge himself without danger only when he is warmly surrounded by his fellow man. For Robinson [...] it was a trial of desperate temerity. Stripped of its threadbare garments - worn, tattered, and sullied, but the fruit of civilized millennia, and impreganted with human associations - his vulnerable body was at the mercy of every hostile element. The wind, the thorned shrubs, the rocks, and the pitiless light assailed and tormented their defenceless prey." [3] 

 

Clothes serve many important functions. But offering a degree of physical protection in a hard, sharp and dangerous world is by no means the least of these. However, as time passes on the island, Crusoe succumbs to the devastating effects of isolation and eventually finds himself as naked - and as bestial - as Nebuchadnezzar in Blake's famous print: 

 

"Robinson could not have said how long it was since he had left his last shred of clothing on some thornbush. In any case, the thought of sunburn no longer troubled him, since his back, flanks, and thighs were now protected by a thick coating of dried mud. His hair and beard had grown so long that his face was almost invisible beneathy their tangled mass. His hands had become mere forepaws used for walking, since it made him giddy to stand upright. His state of physical weakness [...] but above all the breaking of some little spring in his soul, had led him to move only on his hands and knees. He knew now that man [...] can only stay upright while the crowd packed densely around him continues to prop him up. Exiled from the mass of his fellows, who had sustained him as part of humanity without his realizing it, he felt he no longer had the strength to stand on his own feet. He lived on unmentionable foods, gnawing them with his face to the ground. He relieved himself where he lay, and rarely failed to roll in the damp warmth of his own excrement. He moved less and less, and his brief excursions always ended in his return to the mire. Here, in its warm coverlet of slime, his body lost all weight, while the toxic emanations from the stagnant water drugged his mind. Only his eyes, nose, and mouth were active, alert for edible weed and toad spawn drifting on the surface." [4] 

 

III. Lou Carrington's Contrasting Vision of the Pure Animal Man

 

Crusoe's experience of becoming-animal doesn't sound so great a life - and certainly puts being in a Covid lockdown into perspective. It obliges one also to reconsider D. H. Lawrence's fetishisation of the animal man, articulated, for example, in St. Mawr by Lou Carrington who informs her (somewhat sceptical) mother that she is tired of nice, clean men with minds and wants instead men full of their own animal mystery, burning with life:

 

"'A pure animal man would be as lovely as a deer or a leopard, burning like a flame fed straight from underneath. And he'd be part of the unseen, like a mouse is, even. And he'd never cease to wonder, he'd breathe silence and unseen wonder, as the partridges do, running in the stubble. He'd be all the animals in turn, instead of one, fixed, automatic thing, which he is now, grinding on the nerves.'" [5]   

 

It's a lovely vision - in stark opposition to the image of Crusoe -  but one worries that just as the latter is the product of a fear of animality and the loss of humanity defined in moral-rational terms and related to the covering of one's nakedness, so Lawrence's fantasy is the product of his own romanticism and a longing for a natural paradise of some kind, in which man can dispense with clothing and his animal nature will no longer be corrupted and domesticated by civilisation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers interested in the story of Nebuchadnezzar will find it in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, a collection of legendary tales and apocalyptic visions dating from the 2nd century BC. The consensus among scholars is that the work should obviously be read as historical fiction, rather than historical fact.   

 

[2] Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, (Dover Publications, 1998), p. 408-09. 

 

[3] Michel Tournier, Friday, trans. Norman Denny, (John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 33.  

 

[4] Ibid., p. 40.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'St. Mawr', in St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 62.       

Notes on The Fetishist (and Other Stories) by Michel Tournier

(Minerva Press, 1992)

 

 

I. 

 

This collection of short stories by Michel Tournier - originally published as Le Coq de Bruyère (1978) - is a queer and often disconcerting mix of the sordid supernatural (to borrow the author's own description). 

 

Such a mix will, of course, not be to everybody's liking; one anonymous reviewer dismissed the tales as curiosities at best and sneered that Tournier was "no more than a cerebral Joyce Carol Oates, lazily toying with dark urges and forbidden pleasures" [a].   

 

Other readers - myself included - who enjoy philosophically-informed fiction that explores the porno-mythic imagination and accelerates what Jonathan Dollimore termed the perverse dynamic, will, however, like this book - and like it a lot. 

 

To be perfectly frank, I don't care if Tournier is a didactic writer, or if his characters "often seem more like prototypes, moving with the momentum of the ideas they embody, than like real people" [b]. The last thing I wish to encounter in works of art are real people. I meet real people every day in the real world and I'm sick to death of them.

 

Perhaps that's why I was so excited by the concept of photogenesis in 'Veronica's Shrouds', one of the stand-out stories in The Fetishist, which "implies the possibility of producing photos that go beyond the real object" [c]. Such photos do not merely capture a model's likeness or reveal a hidden aspect; they create something new and allow for a becoming-photogenic (even if this process can prove fatal, as it does here, to poor Hector).      

 

Other tales that I absolutely loved include 'The Red Dwarf' and 'Death and the Maiden' - both of which inspired posts on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here, for example. The young female protagonist of the latter, Melanie Blanchard, is, for me, one of the most memorable figures within 20th-century French literature; a character that might have been given us by the great Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb. 

 

As for the story which, in the English translation, lends its title to the collection and which I was particularly looking forward to read, well, I have to admit, it's a bit disappointing. I don't know why that is, but suspect it's because I don't quite share the protagonist's passion for slips, stockings, panties, and bras, etc. Nevertheless, it's a story worth commenting upon at more length ...

 

 

II.

 

'The Fetishist' is a mildly amusing story of sexual obsession; the monologue of an erotomaniac, Martin, who has briefly escaped from the asylum where he has been confined for many years after attempting to steal a garter belt from a woman on the Paris Metro. An extremely harsh and unjust punishment for a man who, whilst he may have kinky tastes and be very highly-strung, isn't mad even in the assessment of the asylum's medical director.              

 

As something of a philosopher on the catwalk, I share Martin's love of clothes and his contempt for nudity: 

 

"They say that the tailor makes the man. How true! A naked man is a worm without dignity, without a function - he has no place in society. I've always had a horror of nudity. Nudity is worse than indecent - it's bestial. Clothes are the human soul. And even more than clothes - shoes." [d] 

 

This is true too, of course, for women - perhaps more so, inasmuch as womanhood and the question of style are inextricably linked (and may, in fact, even be one and the same). And Martin's fate is to be consumed with desire for women and their clothing; not just their underwear, but also their hats and dresses and even handkerchiefs. 

 

Again, what he can't stand is female nudity - not even that of his wife, Antoinette, on their wedding night:

 

"When I went back into the room [...] Antoinette was lying on the troika. Stark naked! And she was looking at me smiling, a little red in the face even so. But I didn't recognize her. Oh yes, there was her face, with its smile that I loved, but that big white body displayed there in front of my eyes like ... like ... Like something in the butchers window! And I was ashamed for her, for myself, for us both." [203]

What saves the situation for Martin is spotting the chair on which his new wife has discarded her clothes:

 

"It was like a little island of solid ground in the middle of a swamp. So I went over to the chair [...] and, well, I went down on my knees and buried my face in the pile of clothes. A warm, soft pile, which smelled good, like new-mown hay in the summer sun. I stayed there a long time like that, on my knees, my face hidden. [...] Next I picked up the clothes and held them in a bundle against my face, and stood up, keeping them there so as not to see anything. I walked over to the bed and scattered them over Antoinette's body. And I said: 'Get dressed!' Then I rushed out like a maniac." [203-04]

Readers will doubtless be pleased to know that Martin does eventually consummate the marriage; but only when Antoinette consents to be fucked fully-dressed. Afterwards, they establish an agreed set of rules governing their lovemaking: "To start with we had agreed that she would never appear naked in front of me." [205] Antoinette quickly grows to like this arrangement, as it secures her a fashionable wardrobe and a wide range of expensive and sophisticated lingerie. 

 

Unfortunately, Martin's fetish develops in a new direction - one that leads him along a crooked path; first stealing an "adorable  little bra in mauve satin trimmed with lace" [210] from a cashier working at the local cinema, and then ... well, then came the regrettable incident on the Metro: "That was what wrecked everything. I must have been mad!" [212] 

Enflamed after a shopping expedition to buy still more fancy lingerie for Antoinette, Martin notices a pretty girl push pass him as he enters the Parisian subway system. That might have been the end of it, only there was a sudden gust of wind:

 

"A ferocious draught was rushing through the half-opened gates. It hoisted up the girl's miniskirt and held it there for a moment, even though she quickly clamped both hands down on her thighs. But in that split second I had seen a suspender belt, and what a suspender belt, it burned me, it pierced me, it practically killed me [...] In black nylon, gathered wide, the white skin of her thighs contrasting sharply with the long, very long, suspenders which started at the belt and travelled down to collect her stockings in their little chromium-plated clips." [212-13]  

 

Of course, he has to have it. And so the story goes from being a Benny Hill-like fantasy, into an unsavoury tale of sexual assault:

 

"I chased after the girl. I caught her up, and wedged her into a corner. Luckily we were alone. I stammered: 'Your suspender belt, your suspender belt, quick, quick!' At first she didn't understand. Then, without hesitating, I pulled up her skirt. She screamed. I repeated: 'Quick, your suspender belt, and I'll go away.' Finally, she obeyed. In the twinkling of an eye, it was done. I had my trophy [...] I was radiant. I brandished my suspender belt like a Red Indian flaunting his Paleface's scalp." [213]

 

When Antoinette discovers what he has done, she leaves him and Martin's life pretty much collapses. He starts stealing from the hoisery section of his local department store, but his heart is no longer in it. Secretly, he longs for the day he is finally caught: "I'd had enough. I wanted to make an end of it." [214]

 

Eventually, he is caught and is sent to prison. Then is interviewed by a psychiatrist and sent to the asylum. But soon he is gripped once more by his fetish for women's underwear. The fact is that whilst some men stand to attention before the flag of their nation, for illicit lovers like Martin it's frilly black knickers and pink nightslips that make them stiff with respect and desire. 

 

And, whilst I don't condone the incident on the Metro, neither do I condemn fetishists for their peccadilloes.     

 

Notes

 

[a] From a review of The Fetishist in Kirkus Reviews (15 August, 1984): click here to read online. 

 

[b] Bob Halliday, 'The Sexual Imagination of Michel Turner', The Washington Post, (28 October, 1984): click here to read online. 

 

[c] Michel Tournier, 'Veronica's Shrouds', The Fetishist, trans. Barbara Wright, (Minerva, 1992), p. 96.  

[d] Michel Tournier, 'The Fetishist', ibid., p. 199. Future page references to this story will be given directly in the text.

 

 

Hoplophilia 2: Mark and Jez: For the Love of Gunny

Yeah, sure. You've got sarcasm, but I've got a big gun. 

Now pass me the Doritos ...

 

 

I. 

 

To reiterate: you don't have to own a gun or be a member of the shooting fraternity to acknowledge the fetishistic appeal of firearms; guns are stylish, guns are cool, and guns are deadly. In short, guns are sexy and they excite many different types of people. 

 

Some, like Melanie Blanchard, whose case we examined in part one [click here], have an erotico-philosophical fascination for guns along with other dangerous objects that might facilitate exiting this boring world. Such people are keen to investigate the profound complicity between love and death.   

 

Others, like the socially and sexually awkward loan manager Mark Corrigan and his best friend Jeremy (played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb in the Channel 4 series Peep Show), have a more comic - although, arguably, just as kinky - fascination for firearms ...

 

 

II. 

 

Following the death of Jeremy's great-aunt, he and Mark (with the assistance of Super Hans, played by Matt King) are clearing out her house. Quite unexpectedly, Jeremy comes across a gun - or an illegal firearm as Mark calls it - hidden in an old box. 

 

Excited by his new toy, Jeremy takes Gunny home and leaves it in a drawer in his bedside table. Although Mark pretends otherwise, he's also turned on by the thought of the weapon and so, later, when he thinks Jez isn't around, he sneaks into the latter's bedroom in order to admire and fondle Gunny.   

 

The following scene, written by Simon Blackwell, is much loved by hoplophiles everywhere:

 

 

Mark: (Right, everyone's out. Might sneak a little peek at the gun. It's fine to be fascinated by the gun. It's fascinating. Everything that can kill a man is fascinating. Guns, electric chairs, paracetamol, lead piping.)

 

Jeremy: Hello Mark. 

 

Mark: Oh, hi Jez. I was just, you know, making sure it was safe. Gunny, the gun. 

 

Jeremy: You like it Mark. That's fine, you like the gun. Guns are great. Design classics like the Routemaster bus or ... those chairs. 

 

Mark: It's fine to like it as an object, isn't it? I might carry it around the flat for a bit. Would that be OK? 

 

Jeremy: Sure, man. Enjoy. 

 

Mark: (Oh, this is good, this feels so good.) [1]

 

What's interesting is how - just like Melanie in Death and the Maiden - Mark also finds the thought of deadly weapons and potentially lethal objects fascinating and how, like Melanie, it (sexually) excites him to hold the beautiful-looking gun.     

 

The episode ends with Jeremy disappointed to discover that Gunny has been deactivated: "It's like he's told me my cock doesn't work." This understanding of the gun in phallic terms is, of course, a psycho-cultural cliché - and you don't have to be a Freudian (or a James Bond fan) to see it [2]. 

 

Melanie Blanchard, if I may refer to her case once more, is happily reminded of a former lover's sex organ - "which had given her so much pleasure for so many weeks" [3] - by the gun she steals. And, when, in 1975, looking for a term to describe the group of sexy young assassins he had assembled and agreed to manage, it's no coincidence that Malcolm McLaren decided upon the term Pistols.  

 

Notes 

 

[1] 'Jeremy's Mummy' is the fourth episode of the fifth series of the British sitcom Peep Show (and the twenty-eighth episode overall). Directed by Becky Martin, it first aired on 23 May, 2008. The full script of this and other episodes of Peep Show can be found online: click here. To watch this and related scenes featuring Gunny, click here.

 

[2] Readers interested in the topic of phallic weapons as a cultural trope can learn more on TV Tropes: click here.

 

[3] Michel Tournier, 'Death and the Maiden', in The Fetishist, trans. Barbara Wright, (Minerva, 1992), p. 122.  

 

 

Hoplophilia 1: Melanie Blanchard and the Practice of Joy before Death

 

 Dave Seeley: Woman with Gun (aka San Diego Girl) 

Oil on Gesso panel (15" x 20") 

daveseeley.com

 

I. 

 

You don't have to own a gun or be a member of the shooting fraternity to acknowledge the fetishistic appeal of firearms; guns are stylish, guns are cool, and guns are deadly. 

 

In short, guns are sexy and excite many different types of people, from Melanie Blanchard, the morbidly curious young female protagonist in Michel Tournier's Death and the Maiden, to the socially and sexually awkward loan manager Mark Corrigan, played by David Mitchell, in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show.

 

I will discuss the latter case in part two of this post [click here]. Here, I wish to speak of Melanie Blanchard and her practice of joy before death ...

 

II. 

 

Ah, the lovely lemon-eating, death-obsessed figure of Mlle. Blanchard ... Her face "the picture of innocence, its thinness and pallor accentuated by the heavy mass of her black hair" [109] - surely one of the most intriguing figures in 20th-century French literature. 

 

I understand perfectly her metaphysical dread of boredom and that great grey wave of blandness which threatens not only to submerge her, but drown the entire world. And, like Melanie, I prefer to eat "everthing acid, sour, or highly spiced" [112] rather than stuff on cakes full of jam and covered in buttercreak icing; the childish food that people were always offering her and which "foreshadowed and provoked the advancing tide of greyness, the engulfment of life in a dense, viscid slime" [112]. 

 

And like Melanie, I believe the practice of joy before death is of vital importance; that one should constantly think about how best to construct a beautiful, stylish - some might even say chic - death and keep at hand the instruments that might facilitate such - ropes, razors, pills, and - if possible - a pistol ...

 

When she thought about [her friend's] fiancé, who was training to become a police officer, it was "always the image of the bulging holster containing his pistol that first entered her mind" [118]. She arranges to meet the young man at a café and when he leaves his cap, truncheon, and bulging holster on the counter in order to go and make a phone call, she yielded to temptation and slipped the latter into her handbag, then made a quick getaway before he returned. 

In several magnificent paragraphs, Tournier writes: 

 

"The pistol [...] was a source of great comfort. Every day, at a certain hour - she always trembled with impatience and anticipated joy as she awaited it - she brought out the magnificent, dangerous object. [...] Placed on the table, naked, the pistol seemed to radiate an energy that enveloped Melanie in voluptuous warmth. The compact, rigorous brevity of its contours, its matt and almost sacerdotal blackness, the facility with which her hand embraced and grasped its form - everything about this weapon contributed to giving her an irresistable force of conviction. How good it would be to die by means of this pistol!" [119]

 

"The pistol was not loaded, but the holster contained a magazine and six bullets, and Melanie soon found the orifice in the butt where it should be inserted. A click apprised her that the magazine was in place. Then the day came when she felt she could no longer wait to try it out. 

      She went off very early in the morning into the forest. When she came to a clearing, a long way from any path, she took the pistol out of her bag, and, holding it with both hands, as far away from her as possible, she pulled the trigger with all her might. Nothing happened. There must be a safety catch. For a moment she ran her fingers over the butt, the barrel, and the trigger. Finally a kind of protuberance slid towards the barrel, leaving a red spot exposed. That must be it. She tried again. The trigger yielded under her fingers and the weapon, as if seized by a sudden fit of madness, kicked in her hands. 

      The explosion had seemed tremendous [...] Trembling all over, Melanie put the pistol back in her bag and resumed her walk. Her legs felt weak, but she didn't know whether this was the result of fear or pleasure. She now had a new instrument of liberation at her disposal, and how much more modern and practical this one was than the rope and the chair! She had never been so free. The key to her cage was there, in her bag, next to her make-up remover, her purse, and her sunglasses." [119-20]   

 

It's not that the gun - or any other instrument of death - is particularly fascinating in itself; it's more the fatal significance of the object that counts for one who knows the sinister happiness of preparing their own exit from this life and thus putting an end to the boredom of existence. The immanence of death - made manifest in the pistol, for example - "conferred an incomparable destiny" [117] on Melanie's life.       

See: Michel Tournier, 'Death and the Maiden', in The Fetishist, trans. Barbara Wright, (Minerva, 1992). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.