Walking the Lobster

A young female fan of French poetry in the 

1950s paying hommage to her hero Nerval

 

In urban slang, apparently, walking the lobster means to take a risk; to cross the line; to go too far ...

 

And, arguably, that's exactly what French Romantic poet and eccentric 19th-century dandy Gérard de Nerval did when he literally took his pet lobster, called Thibault, for a stroll round the Jardin du Palais-Royal on a leash made of bright blue ribbon.

 

Or at least that's what his friend and fellow poet Théophile Gautier would have us believe - and, who knows, perhaps it's true: I think I'd like it to be true ...

 

Though even if the author of Les Filles du feu (1854) - who would later have a significant influence on André Breton and the Surrealists - didn't in fact walk his lobster, he was nevertheless prepared to defend his choice of pet and right to exercise the creature:

 

'Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? Or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t gobble up your monadic privacy like dogs do.' [1]  

 

It's a perfectly reasonable defence and I'm surprised that more people haven't opted to keep crustaceans rather than canines on the basis of this. 

 

In recent times, however, the only person I can recall having a pet lobster and taking him for a walk is Homer Simpson who, unfortunately, ends up having to tearfully eat poor Pinchy after accidently cooking him in a hot bath [2]. 

 

Pass the butter ...

 

 

Homer and Marge walking Pinchy 

the lobster on the beach

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Quoted by Théophile Gautier, in Portraits et Souvenirs Littéraires (1875).

 

[2] The Simpsons, 'Lisa Gets an "A"', S10/E7, (dir. Bob Anderson). First broadcast in November 1998. To watch the (distressing yet hilarious) scene described above, click here.

 

 

Thanks to David Brock for reminding me of Nerval and his lobster - and also for reminding me of the terrible suffering experienced by these intelligent, fascinating creatures when they are captured, traded, cooked, and consumed as part of the global food industry. Readers interested in knowing more about this and perhaps getting involved in the fight to afford lobsters (as well as crabs, prawns and crayfish) greater protection, should visit the Crustacean Compassion website: click here.

 

 

Further Thoughts on Síomón Solomon's 'The Atonement of Lesley Ann'

Artwork for The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020) 

reworked by Stephen Alexander (2021)

 

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 

more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. - Luke 15:7

 

I. 

 

Síomón Solomon's The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020) - a theatrical ghost-cum-love story (based on actual events) - continues to haunt my imagination; particularly the use of the religious term atonment in its title ...

 

One wonders what Solomon has in mind by his use of this concept and why, for example, he didn't simply call his play the killing of Lesley Ann? 

 

For in what way is Lesley Ann atoned? And for what does she need to be atoned? Is Solomon suggesting that she is in some manner complicit in her own abduction and murder (that no one is innocent after all)? 

 

That would certainly be a provocative and unsettling suggestion. But then the whole idea of atonement via a sacrificial offering - be it Christ on the Cross or a child on the Moors - is deeply disturbing, is it not? 

 

Because we know who it is who is washed clean by the spilt blood and forgiven their sins - who it is taking a step on the path towards redemption and, ultimately, not just fellowship but reunification with God [1] - and it isn't the victim; it is, rather, the one who wields the knife ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In other words, it's Ian Brady and Myra Hindley who, via a terrible act of faith, are atoned by the sacrifice of poor Lesley Ann [2].    

 

Again, it's quite shocking to be reminded that the road to salvation can begin in an act of violence and even the practice of evil. But then, of course, the inventor of this whole mad system is a cruel and vengeful God who not only demands sacrifice be made unto him, but is prepared to see even his own son scourged and crucified. 

 

Ultimately, Solomon isn't attempting to exonerate Brady and Hindley, nor excuse their appalling crimes. By incorporating a transcript of the recording made of ten-year-old Downey begging for her young life into the play he reminds us of the facts of the case in all their horror. 

 

What he is doing, rather, is exploring the scandalous logic of Christian morality which offers the possibility of redemption to even the most depraved of individuals.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Atonement means unity or reconciliation between man and God; a coming back into ontotheological wholness (literally at-one-ment). We might note also that the word atonement is often the English translation given for the Hebrew term kaphar [כָּפַר], which means to cover - thus atonement might also be defined as the covering over of sin, or, indeed, the covering up of crime; a form of concealment with which God himself is complicit.     

[2] Unless they have committed what is known within theological circles as the eternal or unpardonable sin and can thus never make amends or receive forgiveness. However, that isn't something - as far as I remember - indicated in Solomon's play.  

 

 

To read the first in what is now a trilogy of posts on Síomón Solomon's The Atonement of Lesley Ann (2020) - on things that go bump in the theatrical night - click here. 

 

And to read the second post in the series, in which I offer some additional thoughts on the play, click here. 

 

 

Sartre's Lobster (l'existentialisme est une peur des crustacés)

 

Sartre and the Lobsters by Dan Meth

tumblr.com

 

 

I. 

 

Usually, when one thinks of the lobster and its role within the cultural imagination, one immediately recalls Salvador Dalí and his surrealist telephone (and also, of course, his Dream of Venus exhibition in which semi-nude female models wore fresh seafood costumes, including lobsters covering their sexual organs). 

And one remembers also the 1978 single by the B-52s, Rock Lobster, which quickly became their signature tune: click here to view an amusing performance of the track on the popular music show Countdown in 1980.  

 

What I didn't know about until very recently, however, was the story of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his (drug-induced) relationship with an imaginary lobster and a cast of crabs ...

 

 

II.

Many people are familiar with the fact that Sartre liked to smoke a pipe. And, being French, it can be taken as a given that he also puffed his way through a fair few packs of fags in his time and liked to knock back the red wine and black coffee. 

 

But not so many people know that he also consumed an impressive quantity of illicit drugs, including amphetamines and the naturally occurring psychedelic compound mescaline; the latter known for its hallucinogenic properties and the drug of choice for many artists and intellectuals (including Aldous Huxley, who famously described his experiences in the 1954 work The Doors of Perception). 

 

Sartre took mescaline shortly before publication of his first book, L'imagination in 1936.* Unfortunately, he had what might be characterised as a bad trip and for many months afterwards imagined he was being stalked by crustaceans (mostly crabs). 

 

Even when the effects of the drug must surely have worn off, Sartre remained convinced when feeling low that he was being followed by a giant lobster, always just hidden out of sight, and consulted Jacques Lacan in the hope that he might free himself of his invisible marine companion (whether this helped, I don't know; Lacan concluded that the philosopher simply had a fear of loneliness).  

 

 

Notes

 

* It should be noted that Sartre didn't go off, like Artaud, to the Mexican desert in order to experiment with mescaline; he had it injected under controlled conditions and observation at the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris, at the invite of his old school chum, the physician and psychoanalyst, Dr. Daniel Lagache.  

 

For an interesting essay on how Sartre's crustacean obsessions influenced his work, see Peter Royle, 'Crabs', in Philosophy Now, Issue 67, (May/June 2008): click here.

 

For a related post on Elsa Schiaparelli's lobster dress (and Kosmo Kramer's lobster shirt), click here. 

Thanks to Tim Pendry for kindly suggesting this post.

Existentialism is a Disappointment

 

 

I. 

 

We all know Heidegger's magnificent response to Sartre's post-War declaration that l'existentialisme est un humanisme; let's just say he wasn't impressed [a]. But rather less well known is the effect it had on a generation of young French intellectuals who had previously adored the author of L'Être et le néant (1943). 

 

This generation includes Michel Tournier, whose recollection of this time is worth sharing at length as it perfectly illustrates the intense punk rock seriousness with which philosophy was then taken and how sexy and scandalous Sartre's phenomenological ontology appeared to be - before he sold out to humanism ...

 

 

II.  

 

"In the darkest days of the War, some of us, depressed by the oppressive restrictions, formed a small group united by a common idea of philosophy - a narrow, even fanatical idea that might well have gone in hand with tumbrils and the guillotine. I was foolishly about to write that Deleuze had been the 'soul' of this group when suddenly I had a vivid image of the brickbats and howls with which that hated word would have been greeted by the adolescents we were then. [...] In any case, Deleuze did set the tone of the group, and it was he who sustained our ardour." [b]

 

"One day in the autumn of 1943 a meteor of a book fell on to our desks: Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. After a moment's stupor there was a long mulling over [...] the book exuded irresistible power; it was full of exquisite subtleties, encyclopedic, proudly technical, with an intuition of diamondlike simplicity running through it from start to finish. Already the clamour of the anti-philosophical rabble could be heard rising in opposition in the press. [...] We were exultant. Like Socrates's disciples in fourth-century Athens or Hegel's students at Jena in 1805, we had the extraordinary good fortune of seeing a philosophy born before our very eyes." [131]  

 

"On October 28, 1945, Sartre called us together. It was a mob scene. An enormous crowd pressed against the walls of the tiny venue. The exits were blocked by those who had not managed to gain entry [...] and women who fainted had to be piled on a convenient grand piano. The wildly acclaimed lecturer was lifted bodily over the crowd and on to the podium. Such popularity should have alerted us. Already the suspect tag 'existentialism' had been attached to the new system. [...] So what was existentialism? We were soon to find out. Sartre's message could be stated in six words: existentialism is a form of humanism. [...] We were devastated. Our master had retrieved that exhausted old figure of Man, still stinking with sweat and 'inner life', from the rubbish heap where we had left him [...] And everyone applauded." [132]

 

"That night we gathered in a café to mourn our loss. One of us thought he had found the key to what went wrong in a novel that Sartre had published in 1938 called Nausea. [...] Suddenly it was all too clear [...] Sartre had [... become] the Autodidact. Around the table we were unanimous in our forecasts of disaster [...] And the future seemed to bear us out [...]" [132-33]

 

It should be noted that, looking back over thirty years later, Tournier is prepared to admit that the reaction experienced by himself and his philosophical comrades was probably a bit harsh:

 

"This reaction to Sartre should be taken for what it was: a liquidation of the father by overgrown adolescents afflicted with the awareness that they owed him everything. With hindsight I can see all the juvenile excess in our condemnation." [133]

 

However, Tournier then importantly qualifies this:

 

"Yet I cannot help thinking that it contained a grain of truth. Sartre seems always to have suffered from an excess of moral scruple. Acute fear [...] undeniably diminished his powers and his creative potential. I am convinced that one cannot live a full and healthy life without a minimum of indifference to the woes of others. [...] Sartre's misfortune was that [...] he was a Marxist who was never able to give up the secret ambition of becoming a saint." [133]

 

And with that Tournier sticks the boot into Sartre in an even more brutal manner than Heidegger ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] For those who don't know ... L'existentialisme est un humanisme (1946) is a text by Jean-Paul Sartre, based on a lecture of the same title given in Paris on 29 October 1945. 

      Invited by Jean Beaufret in November 1946 to comment on Sartre's work and the development of existentialism in France, Martin Heidegger composed a response known in English as the Letter on Humanism (revised for publication in 1947). In this text, Heidegger distanced himself from Sartre and dismissed his thought as merely a reversed form of metaphysics which is oblivious to the truth of Being. 

      Those who wish to read a transcript of Sartre's lecture for themselves can do so by clicking here. Heidegger's response is also available as a pdf online or can be found in his Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 2010). My reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism can be found here.

 

[b] Michel Tournier, The Wind Spirit, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (Collins, 1989), p. 128. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

      Note that I have very slightly modified the translation by Goldhammer in places. The original French text was published as Le Vent Paraclet (Gallimard, 1977) and readers who (rightly) worry about issues of translation are free to consult this if they wish.       

 

Why Even an Anti-Christ Reads the Bible

Cartoon by Will McPhail

willmcphail.com

 

 

I.

 

Someone asks why it is that for a self-professed anti-Christ and atheist I seem to refer so often to the Bible. And I suppose it's a fair enough question (though I don't much care for the implication that I'm some kind of crypto-theologian).

 

Well, apart from the fact that it is always wise to know what one's enemies believe, the fact is that the Bible continues to play an important cultural role and has crucial significance in the work of many of the authors that I love most. 

 

Writers such as D. H. Lawrence, for example, whose work can be read as a prolonged struggle to (re-)interpret the Good Book in a very different spirit than that sanctioned by the Church. As one critic notes:

 

"His writing, at all stages of his career, contains frequent references to biblical characters and symbols while, even when not invoking any particular passage from the Bible, his language is permeated by the rhythms of the Authorised Version." [1]

 

 

II.

 

Michel Tournier is another writer who, by his own admission, was a great reader of the Bible - a book that he describes as a huge attic in which you can find pretty much everything you may need; a constant source of inspiration.

Like Lawrence, Tournier might also be said to perform a creative misreading of the Bible for his own (perverse) ends:

 

"Impatient with conventionally pious glosses, which are too often likely to support the puritanical status quo which he deplores, he reads the Bible against the grain [...] seeking other and more surprising meanings. Further than this, he will recast a story completely, to change its meaning, like a composer who writes variations on a well-known musical theme. If the variations are memorable, they may for ever affect the way we react to the original melody.

      This (mis)reading of the Bible is thus central to the production of meaning in Tournier's texts and in particular to the ethical and metaphysical reflections they develop." [2]

     

Again, like Lawrence, Tournier takes up the cross (i.e., the religious challenge presented by Jesus to imagine a new way of life), but he doesn't follow the latter; indeed, he loses Christ in order to find himself and his own way of being in the world. 

Both writers offer a disrespectful and disloyal reading of the Bible (some would say blasphemous); they treat it as "a corrupt text which needs to be interpreted and even reformulated" [3] in line with their own inner experience. 

 

Above all, what Lawrence and Tournier both desire is a version of the Bible which reinstates the body as central and "re-establishes the link between spiritual love (agape) and carnal love (eros)" [4].

 

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Lawrence's The Escaped Cock (1929), a short novel which, for me, is the culmination of his work, placing the Christian tradition back within a wider religious context and giving us a Jesus unafraid to come into touch and rejoice in the sensual world.    

 

As David Gascoigne writes (with reference to Tournier's fiction):

"The moral implications of placing the body back at the centre of religion in this way are far-reaching. All human appetites, even the basest, are open to spiritualisation: it is not just the soul, but the whole person which is saved." [5] 

This is the gospel according to D. H. Lawrence and Michel Tournier ... And to fully understand it, you will need to know your Bible ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See T. R. Wright, D. H. Lawrence and the Bible, (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 1.    

[2] David Gascoigne, Michel Tournier, (Berg, 1996), pp. 98-99. 

[3] Ibid., p. 119.

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 120. 

The Money Post

Alec Monopoly: Scarface Money Monops (2017) 

Acrylic on canvas with resin (30 x 48 inches)  

artsy.net

 

 

"Money makes the world go around / The world go around / The world go around 

Money makes the world go around / It makes the world go 'round." [1]

 

 

Despite this dynamic aspect - and all too predictably - D. H. Lawrence hated money - hated it! 

 

In one poem, for example, he calls it our vast collective madness and in another he says that money is a perverted instinct [...] which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul [2]. 

 

In his 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', meanwhile, Lawrence describes money as a golden wall which uniquely cuts us off from life; "not even the most fanatical dogmas of an iron-bound religion, can insulate us from the inrush of life and inspiration, as money can" [3].

 

Apart from these instances, there are many, many other occasions on which Lawrence delivers this anti-money sermon and even his fictional characters are obliged to trot out the same rhetoric. When not fucking Connie six ways from Sunday, for example, Mellors can't resist informing her that it is money - along with modern technology and forms of popular entertainment - which is to blame for sucking the spunk out of mankind [4].  

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, Lawrence's puritanical attitude towards money (and the love of money) aligns his thinking with those one might otherwise regard as his moral, political, and philosophical opponents: Christians, Marxists, and Freudians ...

 

This must surely make one suspicious of his thinking on this subject and question whether, as a matter of fact, money might be thought of in a more positive light; as that which creates happiness, rather than being at the root of all evil. 

 

That was certainly the view of the perverse materialist and utopian socialist Charles Fourier, who argued that happiness consists in having a number of diverse passions and - crucially - having the necessary financial means to satisfy them. In Fourier's ideal state, wealth is redeemed and money not only becomes desirable, but "participates in the brilliance of pleasure" [5].

 

Roland Barthes helps us understand why it is that Fourier insists that les sens ne peuvent avoir toute leur portée indirecte sans l'intervention de l'argent:   

 

"Curiously detached from commerce, from exchange, from the economy, Fourierist money is an analogic (poetic) metal, the sum of happiness. Its exaltation is obviously a countermeasure: it is because all (civilized) Philosophy has condemned money, that Fourier, destroyer of Philosophy and critic of Civilization, rehabilitates it: the love of wealth being a perjorative topos [...] Fourier turns contempt into praise [... and] everything, where money is concerned, seems to be conceived in view of this counter-discourse [...]" [6]

 

To advise his readers to seek out tangible wealth - gold, precious stones, and those luxury goods despised by our ascetic idealists - is, as Barthes says, a scandalous thing to do; a major transgression against the teachings of all those (including Lawrence) for whom money is something base and corrupting. 

      

I have to admit, I'm sympathetic to Fourier's view and have always smiled at a remark often attributed to Bo Derek: Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the song 'Money, Money', written by John Kander and Fred Ebb for the big screen version of the musical Cabaret (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972). To watch the song being performed by Joel Gray (as the Master of Ceremonies) and Liza Minnelli (as Sally Bowles): click here. 

      Whilst this is still my favourite song written about money, mention might also be made of ABBA's 1976 single 'Money, Money, Money', written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus: click here. And 'Money (That's What I Want)', a rhythm and blues track written by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford and originally recorded by Barrett Strong in 1959, but which I remember as a single by the Flying Lizards in 1979: click here.          

 

[2] See the poems 'Money-madness' and 'Kill money' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 421-22. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 363.  

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217. See also the closing letter written by Mellors to Connie (pp. 298-302), in which he again expresses his hatred for money and complains about the fact that modern people have conflated living with spending.    

[5] Roland Barthes, 'Fourier', in Sade / Fourier / Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, (University of California Press, 1989), p. 85. 

[6] Ibid., pp. 85-86.

 

 

To read another recent post on Fourier, click here. 

Couscous with Rancid Butter: Thoughts on Charles Fourier

François Marie Charles Fourier 

(1772 - 1837)

 

Le bonheur consiste à avoir de nombreuses passions 

et de nombreux moyens pour les satisfaire. 

 

I. 

 

Antisemitic pervert, feminist, and founder of utopian socialism, Charles Fourier (1772-1837) was - to say the very least - an odd duck. 

 

Nevertheless, he inspired a diverse range of thinkers and writers with a queer politics of desire that portrays heteronormative civilisation as inherently repressive and imagines some kind of libidinal revolution in which we can all be free to not only fuck whom we want, but when we want, where we want, and how we want.  

 

It's a politics that I subscribed to at one time and still find vaguely attractive even now, despite living after the orgy in a transsexual world of ambient pornography from which the illusion of desire is absent [1]. 

 

And despite the fact that we never did get the lemonade seas we were promised ... 

 

II. 

In the 20th century, Fourier's seminal importance was widely acknowledged amongst those searching for a form of radical politics outside of the Marxist mainstream; figures including André Breton, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse all sang his praises. 

 

It seems clear that Michel Tournier was also writing (to some extent) under Fourier's influence, adapting the latter's rhetoric of sexual liberation for his own purposes. Like Fourier, Tournier privileges non-reproductive forms of eroticism and sticks up for the sexually deviant and marginalised (those whom the world often thinks of as monstrous). And like Fourier, he decries the social restraints and prescriptive norms that seek to regulate love and penalise pleasure.  

 

As one critic notes, for both of the above, "it is on the experence of the 'deviant' that a tolerant and humane social order must be based" [2]. However, whilst Fourier "provided a fantastic blueprint for the whole enterprise" [3], Tournier left details of this nouveau monde amoureux deliberately vague.

 

One suspects that, like D. H. Lawrence, Tournier realised that his role, as a novelist, is to help bring forth new feelings, not to suggest practical reforms [4]. And one can't help thinking he was probably wise to realise this. For as David Gascoigne reminds us, Fourier's "massive and whimsical elaboration of the structures of his ideal community are often so preposterous and parodical that they subvert systematisation even while mimicking it" [5].      

 

 

III.

 

I think my favourite text on Fourier remains that written by Roland Barthes [6]. It's many years since I read this essay and have doubtless forgotten some of the finer points regarding Fourier as a logothete, but I do recall Barthes opening with some très amusant remarks about couscous served with rancid butter. 

 

According to Barthes, the goal of Fourier's project was quite simple: to remake the world (via an obsessive form of writing) for the sake of pleasure. Never mind justice and equality; it's pleasure that counts for Fourier. And not pleasure conceived in a eudaemonic manner (i.e., as a form of ethical behaviour that produces wellbeing), but sensual pleasure that results in actual happiness and what Fourier terms Harmony.

 

The kind of pleasure we find in amorous freedom, fabulous wealth, and those other delights that are often condemned as forms of vice. Fourier dreamed of a world of fine weather, perfect melons, and little spiced cakes; a world in which one can enjoy the company of lesbians and there is no longer any normality.

 

As Barthes points out, this coexistence of passions isn't simply another form of liberalism and Fourier doesn't wish to unite people in the name of humanism: 

 

"It is not a matter of bringing together everyone with the same mania [...] so that they can be comfortable together and can enchant each other by narcissistically gazing at one another; on the contrary, it is a matter of associating to combine, to contrast. [...] There is no noble demand to 'understand', to 'admit' the passions of others (or to ignore them, indeed). The goal of Harmony is neither to further the conflict (by associating through similitude), nor to reduce it (by sublimating, sweetening, or normalizing the passions), nor yet to transcend it (by 'understanding' the other person), but to exploit it for the greatest pleasure of all and without hindrance to anyone." [7].

Ultimately, I don't quite know what to make of M. Fourier - the original 24-hour party person, for whom no day is ever long enough for all the merry assignations and pleasures it promises ... 

 

Ultimately, his erotic utopia in which everyone fucks forever sounds exhausting and one thinks again of Baudrillard's story of the porn star on set who turns to one of the other actors and asks: What are you doing after the orgy? 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm using concepts developed by Jean Baudrillard. His argument is that signs and images have erased all secrets and ambiguity, making sex transparent and, at best, something that is simply acted out over and over again with a kind of ironic indifference, or a sense of nostalgia. Whilst we might perhaps challenge this, I think it certainly fair to say (as Michel Houellebecq says): We're a long way from Wuthering Heights.

      See Jean Baudrillard, 'After the Orgy' and 'Transsexuality', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso, 1993). 

     The line from Houellebecq is from his first novel, Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994), trans. into English as Whatever by Paul Hammond, (Serpents Tail, 1998) and refers to the progressive effacement of human relationships and passions.       

 

[2] and [3] David Gascoigne, Michel Tournier, (Berg, 1996), p. 91.

 

[4] The passage in D. H. Lawrence that I'm thinking of is this one:

 

"As a novelist, I feel it is the change inside the individual which is my real concern. The great social change interests me and troubles me, but it is not my field. I know a change is coming - I know we must have a more generous, more human system, based on the life values and not on the money values. That I know. But what steps to take I don't know. Other men know better."

 

See: 'The State of Funk', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge Universty Press, 2004), p. 221. 

 

[5] David Gascoigne, Michel Tournier, op. cit., pp. 92-93. 

 

[6] Roland Barthes's essay on Fourier can be found in the much underrated study, Sade / Fourier / Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, (University of California Press, 1989), pp. 76-120.  

 

[7] Ibid., pp. 99-100. 

 

 

For another recent post on Fourier, click here.  

Zoom: What Would D. H. Lawrence Do?

 

Sat at home, surrounded by screens, I am no longer anywhere, 

but rather everywhere in the world at once, in the midst of a universal banality. 

- Jean Baudrillard

 

I.

 

One of the things I admire about Christianity is the inherent challenge it poses: take up your cross and follow me. These words, spoken by Jesus, are not addressed to those who are merely looking for a new faith, but, rather, those who would establish an entirely new ethical practice or mode of being in the world [1]. 

 

As Nietzsche says, this evangelical way of life - which is often a difficult and dangerous way of life (i.e., one at odds with the world and which can get you fed to the lions) - is what distinguishes a Christian from a non-Christian; he or she doesn't merely think differently, they act differently [2].    

 

One finds a similar call to action in the work of D. H. Lawrence; a writer who demands a far greater level of committment from his followers than most others: "whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn’t like it - if he wants a safe seat in the audience - let him read somebody else" [3].   

 

Like Jesus, to whom he is often compared [4], Lawrence wants his readers to join him in the fight against modern techno-industrial society (or Mammon) and lead radically different lives from their fellow citizens, founded upon contrasting values.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, however, most readers choose to discreetly ignore this revolutionary aspect of his work - and this even includes members of the D. H. Lawrence Society ... 

 

 

II.

 

According to a senior figure within the above - who shall remain nameless - the most exciting thing to emerge out of lockdown (due to the coronavirus pandemic) is the massive extension of social media. 

 

It is, he says, not only a necessity for all of us to embrace new technology, but a wonderful opportunity for members of the Lawrence Society to move online and experience the delights of virtual meetings, rather than suffer the inconvenience of physically gathering in the actual world. 

 

Indeed, he seems to be something of an evangelist for the communications and technology company Zoom, describing his own use of the software as an uplifting experience. 

 

Maybe it is: I don’t know, 'cos I don't use Zoom.

 

But what I do know, however, is that Lawrence was profoundly troubled by transcendent ideals of uplift which run counter to his gargoyle aesthetic and dreams of climbing down Pisgah back into the nearness of the nearest (as Heidegger would say). 

 

He, Lawrence, was particularly concerned by forms of technology that stimulate false feeling and counterfeit notions of community: 

 

"The film, the radio, the gramophone [and now the internet], were all invented because physical effort and physical contact have become repulsive to man and woman alike. The aim is to abstract as far as possible." [5] 

 

Lawrence would thus surely regard social media as just another attempt by hyper-conscious individuals to experience everything in their heads and to exchange the sheer intensity of life lived in the flesh for a virtual sensation. His fear is not that this results in a loss of soul, but in a denial of the body and corporeal reality: 

 

"The amazing move into abstraction on the part of the whole of humanity […] means we loathe the physical element [...] We don't want to look at flesh-and-blood people - we want to watch their shadows on a screen. We don't want to hear their actual voices: only transmitted through a machine.” [6] 

 

The fact that many people prefer to interact with family and friends via a video link is, I think, rather sad. But the fact that a Lawrentian would choose to celebrate this and act as cheerleader for an American tech giant strikes me as, well, problematic to say the least ...

 

For whilst it's not mandatory for an admirer of Lawrence to agree with everything he wrote and live a faultlessly Lawrentian lifestyle, they might at least take his work seriously enough to accept that the question concerning technology remains of vital philosophical import. 

 

Indeed, one might suggest that it has never been more crucial than now to examine our (obsessive) relationship with the screen, which, since the first lockdown in the spring of last year, has become virtually our only communicative interface with the world. 

 

We work online, we shop on line, we play online and thus our professional lives, social lives, and even love lives are all mediated via screens ... If that isn't something to concern members of the D. H. Lawrence Society, then what is?       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Matthew 16:24. The New International Version of this line reads: "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.'"   

 

[2] See Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), section 33.

      Of course, as Nietzsche goes on to say, hardly anybody who has called themselves a Christian has understood this and risen to the challenge that Jesus presented. Nevertheless: "Even today, such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times ... Not a belief but a doing, above all a not-doing of many things [...] To reduce being a Christian, Christianness, to a holding something to be true, to a mere phenomenality of consciousness, means to negate Christianness." Ibid., section 39.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Carlo Linati (22 Jan 1925) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), letter number 3341, pp. 200-01.  

[4] See Catherine Brown, 'D. H. Lawrence: Icon', in D. H. Lawrence and the Arts, ed. Catherine Brown and Susan Reid, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), pp. 426-441. 

      Brown notes of Lawrence: "Christ-like he preached an idiosyncratic vision of salvation both parabolically and explicitly, denounced hypocrisy and materialism, prioritised content over form and soul over intellect, liked children and communal living, prophesised destruction, was poor and physically weak, died in pain and believed in a kind of resurrection." [427] 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Men Must Work and Women as Well', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 277.

[6] Ibid., p. 283.

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one, click here. 

The Filth and the Fury (Or Never Mind the Sex Pistols - Here's the Borborites)

O fangeuse grandeur! sublime ignominie!

 

 

I. 

 

I've always been fond of a bit of base materialism, thus my fascination with the works of Georges Bataille who knew a thing or two about constructing a down and dirty philosophy of excess and excrement (or muck and mysticism as one critic described it) and seeking some kind of transcendent limit-experience via the transgression of social and sexual norms. 

 

But of course, torpedophiles are likely to know all this; there's been shitloads of stuff written on Bataille over the last thirty years - not to mention loads of shit stuff - beginning with Nick Land's classic (if fittingly unorthodox) study The Thirst for Annihilation (1992). 

 

And so my interest here is in not in Bataille, but members of a Gnostic sect who might be said to prefigure the modern writers with whom we are more familiar. Known as the Borborites (or Borborians), their name derived from the Greek word βόρβορος, meaning dirt, muck, or sewage. 

 

It is thanks to this etymology that the term Borborites can probably best be translated as the filthy ones ...

 

 

II.

Like other early Christian sects, there's not a great deal known about the Borborites and what details we do possess were often written by their opponents (so must be read with a degree of scepticism). 

 

It seems that the Borborites based their creed on a number of texts which they deemed sacred, but which would later be branded as heretical; these include, for example, the Gospel of Eve, the Gospel of Philip, and The Apocalypse of Adam. 

 

The figure who most captured their religious imagination, however, was Mary Magdalene and they produced a body of literature revolving around the question of her status and significance, as well as the precise nature of her relationship with Jesus, whom they acknowledged as a teacher, whilst rejecting his Father as an imposter deity [1]. 

According to Epiphanius of Salamis, a 4th-century saint who assembled a compendium of heresies known as the Panarion [2], one Borborite work, known as The Greater Questions of Mary, contained a shocking episode in which Jesus took Magdalene for a walk to the top of a mountain, whereupon he pulled a fully-formed woman from out of his side and engaged in sexual intercourse with her.   

 

As if this weren't enough, Jesus then proceeded to eat his own ejaculate and, turning to Mary, told her: Thus we must do, that we may live. At this point, Mary fainted and had to be helped to her feet by Jesus who chastised her for being of little faith. 

I'm not quite sure what to make of this cum-eating Christ, but it's an amusing narrative to consider. As are the other elements of sexual sacramentalism which, according to Epiphanius, formed an important role in Borborite ritual. He informs us, for example, that the Borborites performed their own obscene version of the eucharist (i.e. what would become known as a black mass), in which - scorning the use of wine and wafers - they would consume menstrual blood and semen. 

 

Epiphanius also insists that the Boborites had a penchant for eating aborted foetuses obtained from women who became pregnant during religious sex rituals, but I find such hard to swallow (even when mixed with honey and various spices) [3].       

 

In conclusion: unlike most other Gnostics who, because of their belief that the flesh was evil and formed a prison for the spirit, practised celibacy, fasting, and various other forms of self-denial, the Borborites were more cheerfully libertine than grimly ascetic and that makes them rather more attractive in my book. 

 

To paraphrase Dick Emery, ooh, they were awful ... but I like them.   

 

Notes

 

[1] According to Borborite theo-cosmology, there were eight heavens, each under a separate archon (ruler). In the seventh, reigned Sabaoth, creator of heaven and earth and the God of the Jews, believed by some Borborites to take the form of an ass or pig. Jesus - whom they considered a celestial being and not born of Mary (in accordance with the doctrine docetiem) - belonged to the eighth heaven, reigned over by Barbeloth, the supreme deity and Father of All.   

 

[2] Epiphanius was a 4th-century bishop considered a saint and a true defender of the faith by both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. He is best remembered as the man who assembled a compendium of heresies known as the Panarion (c. 375-78), a work which discusses numerous religious sects and philosophies from the time of Adam onwards, detailing their histories and condemning their unorthodox beliefs and practices. According to Epiphanius, when he was a young man, he had dealings with the Borborites, but declined their invitation to join them, instead informing the local Church authorities of what they were up to and therby ensuring they were excommunicated and exiled. 

[3] Similar accusations of ritual child abuse and eating babies etc. would continue to be made by the Church against those it feared and hated or regarded as heretics; not just Gnostics, but Jews, pagans, witches, Satanists, et al. For Christians, this blood libel is the worst of all conceivable charges you can lay against those regarded as non-believers.     

Holy Trichophilia! It's Hairy Mary Magdalene!

 Detail from an illustration in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493),

depicting the assumption of a hirsute Mary Magdalene

 

 

I. 

 

Hair fetishism - or trichophilia as it is known by aficianados - is an erotic partialism in which an individual finds hair sexually arousing to look at, touch, smell, or lick. Whilst usually head hair is the object of fascination, some trichophiles express a preference for underarm hair, pubic hair, or hair on other areas of the body. 

 

Similarly, whilst some trichophiles have a penchant for dry hair, others insist it's only sexy when wet; some like long, straight blonde hair, carefully styled and groomed, others are excited by short, curly dark hair left to grow in a wild, natural state.  

 

Ultimately, like other members of the kinky community, hair lovers subscribe to a libertine philosophy of live and let live. Or as one trichophile joked: 'When it comes to hair fetishism, the only rule is hirsute yourself.'             

 

 

II. 

 

One of the defining characteristics of mammals, hair - a biomaterial primarily composed of the protein alpha-keratin - doesn't have any inherent value or sexual significance; these things are ascribed to it culturally.

 

Those brought up within the three main Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - seem to find hair - particularly female hair - problematic and associate various moral, magical, and erotic properties with it. 

 

Thus, Muslim women, for example, are expected to wear a hijab whilst in the presence of any male outside of their immediate family and Christian women in the West were also, until fairly recently, expected to cover their heads in church, thereby retaining modesty whilst at prayer.         

 

And speaking of Christian women ...

 

 

III.

 

Apart from the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene is arguably the most important woman in the Bible [1] and the subject of great controversy (and confusion) amongst the Church Fathers. For according to some sources, she was not only a woman of independent means, but also a former prostitute who had been possessed by seven demons [2]. 

 

In addition, she was also abnormally hairy, as depicted in numerous works of European art from the 15th-century onwards.

 

Just to be clear on this latter point: Mary didn't just have long luscious locks like Rapunzel; this gal was covered in thick hair - some might even call it fur - like some kind of wild woman of the woods or sideshow freak. Only her hands, breasts, face, knees and feet were free of hair.  

 

Whilst this might just be an artistic metaphor of some kind [3], it's also possible that Mary suffered from some form of hypertrichosis. And, if so, what does this tell us about Jesus; was his obvious affection for Mary - something that used to aggrieve his male disciples - a sign of his trichophilia? 

 

Maybe: that would certainly help explain, for example, the time he allowed his feet to be dried by a sinful woman using her long hair [4].   

 

Of course, it could be that Mary's condition only manifested itself after her time with Jesus. Some believe, for example, that in her later life she became a religious recluse and cared nothing for possessions - not even clothes which gradually fell away, and that her hair grew in order to protect her modesty [5].

 

Ultimately, who knows what the truth is in Mary's case? She is thought to be an actual historical figure, but very little is known about her life and she seems to have left behind no writings of her own. So let's just close this post with another fantastic image showing Mary in all her hairy glory ...

 

 

Mary Magdalene carried by Angels

(c. 1490-1500)

Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen

Notes

 

[1] Mary Magdalene is mentioned by name twelve times in the canonical gospels, which is more than any other woman apart from the Virgin Mary. She was an important follower of Jesus and was not only present at the crucifixion, but at the resurrection also. Indeed, according to some accounts, she it was who discovered the empty tomb and she it was whom the newly risen Jesus instructed not to touch him (on the grounds that he had not yet ascended unto his Father). She is also a favourite amongst the Gnostic authors, some of whom imagine that she and Jesus eventually married. See for example the non-canonical 3rd-century text known as the Gospel of Philip: click here.   

 

[2] The portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a repentent prostitute began after a series of Easter sermons delivered in 591, when Pope Gregory I conflated her with Mary of Bethany (sister to Martha and the zombie-like Lazarus) and the unnamed hussy who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36-50. This resulted in a widespread belief that she was a former bad girl; a belief which has persisted within the popular imagination to this day, despite the attempt by Pope Paul VI in 1969 to quash it once and for all.

      As for the demon possession, see Luke 8:1-3 and/or Mark 16:9. Luckily, Jesus was an excellent exorcist and soon put the girl right in mind and body. Consequently, she was completely devoted to him.

 

[3] That is to say, Mary Magdalene's hair suit is an iconographic feature - not the result of any medical condition - whose depiction borrows from religious drama and legend. 

 

[4] See Luke 7:36-50 in the New Testament. Lines 36-38 in the New International Version read:  

 

"When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 

      A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.       

      As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them."

 

So touched is Jesus by this (rather kinky) act of love, that he immediately forgives the woman her sins. 

 

[5] Unfortunately, this is another mistaken belief which is again due to the conflating of Mary Magdalene's life with that of another Mary, namely, Saint Mary of Egypt, a 4th-century prostitute who did indeed become a Christian ascetic and is venerated within the Orthodox and Coptic tradition as a Desert Mother.