Aphantasia: On Eliminating the Imagination

Aphantasia (oil and clay) 

by Rachel L. Clarke

artphantasia.com

 

 

I. 

 

According to some, imagination is the foundation of material reality. That is to say, nothing actually exists before it has first been seen in the mind's eye. Such people have no evidence for this and so either quote poets or Plato for support, or fall back on good old common sense [1]. 

 

Isn't it obvious, they ask, that dreams, desires, and imaginative ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things and precede substantial forms. Think about it, they say, man like God creates by first imagining things and then willing them into physical existence.  

 

Well, I have thought about it and this mixture of idealism and folk psychology seems to me nonsense. I agree with D. H. Lawrence here; no mind - not even Jordan Peterson's - could have imagined a lobster "dozing in the under-deeps, then reaching out a savage and iron claw!" [2] 

 

Ultimately, I would suggest, we can only imagine things that already exist and that it is not the imagination that determines reality, but reality that shapes the imagination. To quote Lawrence once more: 

 

"Even the mind of God can only imagine 

those things that have become themselves: 

bodies and presences, here and now, creatures with a foothold in creation 

even if it is only a lobster on tip-toe." [3]

 

  

II.

In an essay on eliminative materialism, Paul Churchland argues that "our common sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience" [4].

 

One of the problems with folk psychology is that when evaluated with regard to its coherence and continuity in relation to more recent work in evolutionary biology and neuroscience, it soon becomes increasingly suspect and would, argues Churchland, evoke open skepticism were it not one of our oldest and most cherished theories.

 

The fact is, that even the faculty of creative imagination, for example, is something that remains almost wholly mysterious within the framework provided by folk psychology. The latter believes its truths to not only be self-evident, but universally and eternally true and so is little prone to self-criticism or to change; perfect theories have no need to evolve in the light of new evidence or knowledge. 

 

Ultimately, folk psychology has become a form of faith or dogma, proud of its own conceptual inertia. At best, says Churchland, it provides a "partial and unpenetrating gloss on a deeper and more complex reality" [5] - one that is wholly material (rather than imaginary) in nature and not cluttered up with a lot of second-hand representations and hoary old archetypes [6].

 

         

Notes

 

[1] There's a very good reason why those who belong to a post-Romantic literary and/or post-Kantian philosophical tradition often return to a conceptual framework for mental phenomena based upon a remarkably conservative theory of common sense (or as they sometimes call it intuitive wisdom). For as Paul Churchland points out, it very conveniently provides "a simple and unifying organization to most of the major topics in the philosophy of mind, including the explanation and prediction of behavior, the semantics of mental predicates, action theory, the other-minds problem, the intentionality of mental states, the nature of introspection, and the mind-body problem". 

      Unfortunately, explanatory and predictive success does not necessarily make a theory true and those who subscribe to folk psychology might at least consider the possibility that its principles are radically false and its ontology is an illusion.

      See Churchland's essay 'Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes', in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 2, (Feb 1981), pp. 67-90. Lines quoted are on p. 68. I will return to this essay in part two of this post.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Demiurge', The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 603. 

      Lawrence's opposition to the imagination as the ability to make pictures of the world and oneself in the mind without any external sensory input, is revealed in his review of The Social Basis of Consciousness (1927) by Trigant Burrow. Lawrence argues, for example, that mental images are a substitute for life. As soon as man falls into self-consciousness, he makes pictures of himself - that is to say, he imagines himself ideally - and then he tries to live according to the picture. The imagination is thus a form of imprisonment; we become trapped within a world of representation. If only, he says, we could understand and admit to ourselves that we and the world are not the same as the images we make, then we might be able to live and think and create in an entirely fresh (non-ideal) manner. Ultimately, says Lawrence, the imagination is not real: "It is a horrible compulsion set over us [...] The true self is not aware that it is a self. A bird as it sings sings itself. But not according to a picture. It has no idea of itself." Those who call themselves psychoanalysts, if they really cared about their patients, would liberate them from their own imaginations and get them back into touch with the world as it exists outside them (i.e. mind-independently): they must shatter the great image-producing machine that reflects nothing but their own human conceit. 

      See 'Review of The Social Basis of Consciousness, by Trigant Burrow', in D. H. Lawrence, Introductiond and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp, 329-336. Lines quoted are on pp. 334 and 336.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Demiurge', The Poems, Vol. I., op. cit., p. 603. 

 

[4] Paul Churchland,  'Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes' ... op. cit., p. 67.

[5] Ibid., p. 74.

[6] Even some philosophers in the European tradition eventually grew tired of post-Kantian models of the imagination; Gilles Deleuze, for example, refused to think of it as something innate or natural, but, rather, something that has been constructed and authorised by the governing determinations of the good, the true, and the beautiful. 

 

 

Readers interested in knowing more about aphantasia - the inability to create mental images in one's mind - should visit the Aphantasia Network: click here. 

Global Goals

SDG logo

 

I. 

 

You may have noticed that all kinds of powerful people have been adopting the phrase build back better as a kind of zen fascist mantra over the last few years. The same people - let's call them the global elite - have also started to wear a circular multicoloured little badge and I thought readers might like to know why that is ...    

 

 

II. 

 

In September 2015, the leaders of all 193 member states of the UN adopted a universal programme known as Agenda 2030. 

 

At the heart of this programme are a number of Sustainable Development Goals (known more simply as SDGs or the Global Goals), which promote the utopian fantasy of a better world for everyone by the end of this decade; provided that is, we all work together and accept that far-reaching social, economic, and environmental change is necessary. 

 

If we all mobilise successfully, argue those who are seriously pushing this agenda, then we will meet the 169 targets contained within the 17 Global Goals [1] and transform society from top to bottom; ending all forms of poverty, achieving social justice, and tackling climate change, for example. 

 

Whilst the private sector, the media, civil society, and the general public will all have a role to play in this Great Reset, obviously governments will be expected to take a lead and establish the necessary frameworks via which the Global Goals can be implemented and achieved. The UN will monitor and report on their progress "towards building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future for people and planet" [2].        

  

Of course, although unanimously agreed, the Goals are not legally binding and the UN doesn't have the power to enforce them - it can merely encourage everyone to get on board. Those who wish to show their support for the New World Order can even buy their very own SDG pin on Amazon: click here. 

 

And once you have the badge or brooch, you might want also to follow these suggestions about how to contribute to Agenda 2030:

 

"Spread the word about the Global Goals, so that more people can take action and contribute to meeting the Goals. Join an organization that actively contributes to meeting the Goals. Reduce your general waste and your enviromental footprint. Avoid plastics, take the train instead of the airplane, the bike instead of the car. Make conscious choices in your consumption. Buy local and try to make sure what you buy is produced in fair and sustainable ways. Show compassion and stand up against racism, exclusion, discrimination and injustice. Use your imagination. The future depends on our ability to imagine it." [3]

 

That last line is, of course, an expression of the purest idealism. In fact, it's almost a form of magical thinking; i.e., the belief that one's thoughts and fantasies can have real effects in the actual world providing one really, really wants something to happen or to change. The young and religiously-minded are particularly susceptible to such thinking. And the insane ...     

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The 17 Global Goals are: 

 

1. No poverty 

2. Zero hunger 

3. Good health and well-being 

4. Quality education 

5. Gender equality 

6. Clean water and sanitation

7. Affordable and clean energy

8. Decent work and economic growth

9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure

10. Reduced inequalities

11. Sustainable cities and communites

12. Responsible consumption and production

13. Climate action

14. Life below water

15. Life on land

16. Peace, justice and strong institutions

17. Partnerships for the Goals

 

The order of the Goals does not signify priority; "all are critical and interdependent". 

 

[2] All information in this post is taken from globalgoals.org. Lines quoted are from the Q&A section.

[3] For more hints and tips of good things you can do, read the UNs Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World, click here. 

 

 

To understand Agenda 2030 etc. within a philosophical context, see Jean Baudrillard's essay 'The Violence of the Global', trans. François Debrix: click here.

On Politeness of the Heart (A Nietzschean Guide to Good Manners)

 

At the risk of repeating what I've said in an earlier post, I feel it's important to respond to an email sent to me by an angry young man who suggests that rudeness is a worthwhile price to pay for sincerity and authenticity and that great artists can not only be excused their bad manners, but also their cruelty towards others. 

 

Amongst those he calls upon to support this argument is Nietzsche ...

 

Now, it's unfortunate that there are still readers of the latter who refuse to acknowledge that central to his ethics and the cultivation of the self are what he terms the four cardinal virtues: honesty, courage, magnanimity, and, finally, politeness [1]. This last virtue being just as crucial as the first and neither compromised nor negated by it. 

 

In other words, being honest with oneself doesn't justify being impolite or ill-mannered to others and moving beyond good and evil doesn't mean behaving in a boorish or brutal manner. And whilst it's true that Nietzsche rejects the Christian virtue of pity [Mitleiden] and speaks of the positive role that cruelty has played in the formation of man (often using Grausamkeit as synonymous with Kultur), so too does he privilege terms such as benevolence [Wohlwollen] and joy [Freude]. 

 

Ultimately, Nietzsche is a eudaimonic philosopher (if of a rather unusual kind); i.e., one concerned with promoting (and enhancing) the happiness and wellbeing of man as a species. This is particularly evident in his Epicurean mid-period works, wherein he writes, for example, of those little, daily acts of kindness that, although frequent, are often overlooked by those who study morals and manners; the smiling eyes and warm handshakes which display what he terms politeness of the heart [2].

 

And so, whilst it's true that, for Nietzsche, what are virtues in one may be vices in another (and vice versa), I can't imagine him ever being anything other than courteous in his own life. Thus, whilst he repeatedly encourages everyone to become what they are, that means giving style to the chaos within and listening to one's intellectual conscience; it surely doesn't mean becoming coarse, crass and crude [ungehobelt]. 

 

In conclusion ... Being rude, lacks discipline; it's base and lazy behaviour. Politeness is an acknowledgment of the other person's uniqueness of being; their starry singularity. My angry young correspondent would thus do well to remember that spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] These four cardinal virtues are found in Daybreak, §556. Five years later, Nietzsche provides a modified list consisting of courage, insight, sympathy, and solitide; see Beyond Good and Evil, §284. Although he continually supplemented this list and substituted terms, he never made rudeness a virtue.

 

[2] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), I. 2. 49. 

      This phrase, politeness of the heart, was earlier used by Goethe who saw it as closely allied to love. It was also used, in 1892, by Henri Bergson in a lecture to students. For Bergson, kindness of the heart helps evoke a better future by creating the conditions in which positive change can unfold (we are tempted to call it a form of grace). Bergson also spoke of politeness of manners (i.e., everyday courtesies) and politeness of spirit (compassion or empathy).   

A Brief History of Angry Young Men and the Manosphere from John Osborne to Ian Ironwood

 

 

Whilst the angry young men of the post-war era were prominent in the world of theatre and literature during the 1950s and early-60s [1], now there's a new generation of disillusioned malcontents who belong to what is commonly termed the manosphere [2] - a digital space composed of numerous websites, blogs, and online forums promoting a reactionary model of masculinity which, whilst not always toxic, is invariably anti-feminist and frequently misogynistic. 

 

The overall tone of the manosphere is aggressive, abusive, and alienated. Not only can one find a defence of the most appalling behaviour - including incitement to real-world violence - but such behaviour is celebrated as politically rebellious and anti-woke. Jokes about rape and other acts of sexual violence sit uneasily alongside discussions of men's rights.

 

Indeed, some within the manosphere seem to think hate speech is an expression of a special form of love; but then the same people probably also believe that Wilde's each man kills passage from The Ballard of Reading Gaol provides justification for murder (and they wonder why they're incels).

 

If John Osborne is the name most readily associated with the original angry young men, then Jordan Peterson is, arguably, the name that most often pops up when you cruise the manosphere, with some of his more lobster-like followers describing him as a spiritual saviour who will redeem masculinity from modern chaos and restore phallocratic order with his folksy rules for life and an all-beef diet ...!            

 

In brief - and to be clear - I dislike Jimmy Porter and his disconcerting mixture of sincerity and malice; I find him vulgar as well as cruel; a resentful loudmouth who thinks good manners and kindness can be discarded in the name of absolute honesty. 

 

Ultimately, I prefer the figure of Sally as imagined by Noel Gallagher: a young woman who even when realising that her life has been a series of missed opportunities and feels her soul sliding away, still refuses to look back in anger (at least not today) [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The angry young men were a loose group of mostly working and lower middle-class British playwrights and novelists who came to fame in the 1950s. Leading figures included John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, and Alan Sillitoe. 

      The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer in order to promote Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger. The media soon began using the phrase, however, to describe any young writers who were bitterly disillusioned with traditional British society and culture. As a result, the phrase began to lose its meaning and many writers to whom it was applied refused the label. 

 

[2] The term manosphere is believed to have first appeared on a blog in 2009. It was subsequently popularized by professional sex nerd Ian Ironwood, who published an ebook entitled The Manosphere: A New Hope for Masculinity in 2013. He blogs (for an ascendent manosphere) at theredpillroom.blogspot.com 

 

[3] I'm referring here to the Oasis single written by Noel Gallagher, 'Don't Look Back in Anger', released Feb 1996 and taken from the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, (Creation Records, 1995). Click here to watch the official video dir. Nigel Dick (remastered and in HD), featuring Patrick Macnee.  

 

 

On the Life, Death, and Shameful Maligning of Jill Bennett by John Osborne

Jill Bennett 

(as Aunt Pen in The Nanny, 1965)

 

 

Jill Bennett (1931-1990) was a British actress and - to her great misfortune - the fourth wife of overrated playwright John Osborne. 

 

Although born overseas (in Penang), Bennett was educated at an independent girls' boarding school in Surrey and trained as an actress at RADA. She made her stage début in 1949 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. Her first movie role followed two years later; a murdered showgirl in The Long Dark Hall (1951). 

 

Bennett went on to build a long and successful career on stage, film and TV. I remember her best as sexy Aunt Pen, in the Hammer horror classic The Nanny (1965), and as Jacoba Brink, a Soviet figure skater hired to train Bibi Dahl (played by Lynn Holly-Johnson), in the 1981 Bond film For Your Eyes Only. 

 

Her final film performance was as Mrs. Lyle in The Sheltering Sky (1990). She died - by suicide [1] - in October of that year, aged 58, having long suffered from depression which was in no small degree triggered and intensified by her disastrous ten-year marriage to Osborne (1968-1978).    

The latter, who was subject during Bennett's lifetime to a restraining order which prevented him from writing about her or their marriage, immediately wrote a scurrilous chapter about his ex-wife as an addition to the second volume of his autobiography. The chapter, in which he rejoiced at her death, rightly caused controversy; this wasn't simply looking back in anger by a bitter old man, this was a vile display of toxic masculinity.  

 

Bennett undoubtedly had her faults: maybe, as Osborne claimed, everything about her life had been a pernicious confection and sham. It's true also that she dished out many vicious insults of her own directed towards her husband; publicly mocking his impotence and deriding him as a closeted homosexual, for example. 

 

But, even if all's fair in love and war, you don't need to speak spitefully of the dead and show open contempt for a woman who has taken her own life; describing her suicide, for example, as a tawdry piece of theatricality, if "one of the few original or spontaneous gestures in her loveless life" [2].

 

Nor do you need to add that your only regret is not being able to look upon her open coffin and shit upon the corpse. This doesn't make you a transgressive author who should be celebrated for the brutal violence of their language. It just makes you a prick ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Bennett took an overdose of quinalbarbitone (or secobarbital as it is known in the United States).    

 

[2] John Osborne, Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography, (Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 259.  

Musical bonus: In 1992, Bennett's ashes - along with those of her friend, the actress Rachel Roberts (who also died by suicide, in 1980) - were scattered by the film and theatre director Lindsay Anderson on the River Thames, while musician Alan Price sang the Leiber and Stoller song Is That All There Is? 

      Footage of the event was included in Anderson's autobiographical BBC documentary also entitled Is That All There Is? (1992): click here to watch on YouTube.

The Nanny (1965)

Original film poster with artwork by Tom Chantrell

 

Apparently, The Nanny (dir. Seth Holt, 1965) is far superior to the novel (of the same title) by Evelyn Piper upon which it's based. 

 

I can't vouch for that, as I haven't read the book. But I can well believe it, as this British suspense thriller - with elements of real horror, as one might expect of a Hammer Film production - is an exceptionally fine little film that ticks many of the boxes I'm looking to have ticked when it comes to a movie of this kind. 

 

These include, for example: Bette Davis in psycho biddy mode as a kind of anti-Poppins; Pamela Franklin playing a worldly fourteen-year-old obsessed with boys and cigarettes; and Jill Bennett in the role of a sexy aunt.  

Whilst we're speaking of the cast, mention should also be made of Wendy Craig, as Virginia, the neurotic mother of dead daughter Susy and disturbed son Joey (played by ten-year-old William Dix); it's always nice seeing Craig on screen as she reminds me of my own childhood - as does Harry Fowler, who puts in a brief appearance as the milkman.   

 

Now that Talking Pictures TV show this film every now and again, I would encourage readers to catch it if they can - the last Hammer production in black and white and containing one of Jimmy Sangster's best lines: 'He's looking up your skirt, the dirty git'. 

 

To watch the original theatrical trailer: click here. 

 

 

We'll Never Have Paris: une critique pour le 14 julliet

Repeater Books, 2019

 

 

I don't want to quibble over a back cover blurb designed to big-up the seventy-nine authors contained in the five-hundred and eighty-three pages of this book, edited by Andrew Gallix, but if they all deserve to be named among the 'most talented and adventurous writers' in the English-speaking word today then je suis l'oncle d'un singe. 

 

However, once you remove from the menu of this moveable feast some of the more bland offerings and half-baked items, then you're left with many things to savour [1] and it's unfortunate that what could have been an excellent slim little book has become (in places) bloated and boring. 

 

The minimalist maxim, less is more, should always determine a project of this kind and every editor should keep a working model of a guillotine on their desk, because, to paraphrase Robespierre, editing is nothing but a form of prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. 

I suppose, like General de Gaulle in his helicopter, one of the things I was looking for was a greater level of cohesion. There were too many times when reading this book that I felt like saying: Gallix, remettez-moi un peu d'ordre dans ce bordel! [2] The idea that a chaos of writers and ideas will automatically result in a work of great beauty (or even great interest) is, sadly, mistaken.   

I also couldn't help feeling that Lee Rourke reveals something crucial with the title of his piece. For this book is ultimately a jigsaw picture of a Paris already imagined, rather than an exciting new vision [3]. 

 

Thus it is, that all the usual suspects - as well as all the usual street names, monuments and myths - appear in this book over and over again, until even the most ardent francophile begins to roll their eyes and look for a way to exit the twentieth century, so that they might concern themselves only with those moments when life shatters the glaciation of literary nostalgia and allows us to enter a Paris to come ... [4] 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] For the record, the pieces I admired most in We'll Never Have Paris are: 

 

Paris at 24 Frames a Second, by Richard Kovitch, pp. 182-190.

The Past is a Foreign City, by David Collard, pp. 191-196. 

Waiting for Godard, by Jeremy Allen, pp. 197-203.

City Not Paris, by Anna Aslanyan, pp. 276-282.

Manna in Mid-Wilderness, by Natalie Ferris, pp. 283-288.

Waiting for Nothing to Happen, by Andrew Gallix, pp. 294-299.

Donut, by Will Ashon, 300-302.

The Arraignment of Paris, by Stuart Walton, 332-336.

Paris Perdu, by Tom McCarthy, pp. 342-344.

Ten Fragments of an Idea of Paris Already Imagined by You, by Lee Rourke, pp. 350-356.

Terminus Nord, by Adam Roberts, pp. 367-377.

Poisson Soluble, by Lauren Elkin, pp. 378-387.

Paris, Isidore Isou, and Me, by Andrew Hussey, pp. 448- 454.  

Anchovies - Brian Dillon, pp. 538-543.

I suppose I should also mention Flogging a Dead Clothes Horse, by Thom Cuell, pp. 255-263, which discusses the influence of Paris on Malcolm McLaren's political and artistic imagination, though, again, it simply rehearsed a lot of the same old ideas.

 

[2] I'm grateful to Richard Kovitch who writes of de Gaulle's lament whilst flying high above Paris; see Paris at 24 Frames a Second, We'll Never Have Paris, p. 184.  

[3] Lee Rourke, Ten Fragments of an Idea of Paris Already Imagined by You, We'll Never Have Paris, pp. 350-356. 

[4] I'm paraphrasing from Leaving the 20th Century, (Free Fall Publications, 1974), a collection of Situationist writings ed. and translated by Chris Gray.   

I Had So Much Rather the Centaur Had Slain Hercules ...

"Man's being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, 

at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, 

half immersed in nature, half transcending it." - Ortega y Gasset

 

 

On viewing an (unidentified) artistic representation of Hercules slaying Nessus [1], Lawrence writes: 

 

"I had so much rather the Centaur had slain Hercules, and men had never developed souls. Seems to me they're the greatest ailment humanity ever had." [2] 

 

Whilst we might ponder what the link is between the killing of Nessus and the development of the human soul, I love these two short lines in which Lawrence recognises that the soul is a type of affliction and that mankind might have been happier and more beautiful - like flowers - had we never experimented with the internalisation of cruelty and subjected the flesh to psychology.  

 

One could quote Wilde at this point - or Nietzsche - but let's remind ourselves of Foucault's fascinating take on this question in Discipline and Punish which ends with a killer twist:

 

"It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised [...] This is the historical reality of [the] soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint. This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness, etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body." [3]

 

In conclusion - and returning to Lawrence - it's obvious that he reads the slaying of the centaur as a triumph of human idealism over instinctive animality and, like Lou Carrington in St Mawr, he dreams of a time to come when men might untame themselves, regain their animal mystery and become-centaur ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In Greek mythology, Nessus, son of Centauros, was killed by Heracles with a poisoned arrow, after the latter saw the former attempt to rape his wife, Deianeira, having carried her across the river Evinos. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Paris Letter', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 143.  

[3] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan, (Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 29-30. 

That City of Dreadful Night: D. H. Lawrence's Letters from Paris

Paris est toujours une bonne idée

 

 

I. 

 

I'm currently reading a big fat book of essays, short stories, and poems by over seventy authors, edited by Andrew Gallix [1], exploring the fascination that writers from the English-speaking world have for the French capital - although, as becomes clear, they are mostly enchanted by a myth of their own invention, rather than by Paris as a place that can be located on a map.       

 

Of course, not all English writers have been enamoured with the City of Lights. D. H. Lawrence, for example, famously wrote in 1919: "Paris is a nasty city, and the French are not sympathetic to me." [2] 

 

Five years later, however, Lawrence had changed his tune: "Paris isn't so bad - to me much nicer than London - so agreeably soulless" [3]. 

 

Indeed, in almost every letter and postcard sent to friends at the beginning of 1924 from Le Grand Hotel de Versailles (on the Boulevard Montparnasse), Lawrence was saying much the same thing: "Paris looking rather lovely in sunshine and frost - rather quiet, but really a beautiful city" [4]. He even cheerfully informed his mother-in-law that the Parisians were very friendly [5]. 

But of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, there were sudden (and frequent) mood changes during his short stay in Paris, as this letter written to Catherine Carswell illustrates:

 

"Today it is dark and raining, and very like London. There really isn't much point in coming here. It's the same thing with a small difference. And not really worth taking the journey. Don't you come just now: it would only disappoint you. Myself, I'm just going to sleep a good bit, and let the days go by [...] Paris has great beauty - but all like a museum. And when one looks out of the Louvre windows, one wonders whether the museum is more inside or outside - whether all Paris, with its rue de la Paix and its Champs Elysée isn't also all just a sort of museum." [6]   

Several days later, and Lawrence is still lying low in Paris (whilst Frieda buys some new clothes), but feeling a little more positive about the city and its residents:

 

"Paris is rather nice - the French aren't at all villain, as far as I see them. I must say I like them. They are simpatico. I feel much better since I am here and away from London." [7]

 

And so, despite informing one correspondent that the city was far from gay, Lawrence mostly enjoyed his short stay: "Paris has been quite entertaining for the two weeks: good food and wine, and everything very cheap." [8]  

 

II.

 

In 1929, Lawrence returned to Paris where he oversaw publication of a new (inexpensive) edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover to try and stop the pirated editions then in circulation. If, five years earlier, he had been mostly positive in his response to the city, now he was as hostile to it as he was to most (if not all) large cities:

 

"I don't a bit like Paris. It is nowadays incredibly crowded, incredibly noisy, the air is dirty and simply stinks of petrol, and all the life has gone out of the people. They seem so tired." [9]   

 

Sadly, of course, it was Lawrence himself that the life had almost entirely gone out of; he was to die eleven months after writing this, aged 44, in Vence (428 miles south of Paris, as the crow flies).           

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Andrew Gallix (ed.), We'll Never Have Paris, (Repeater Books, 2019). If I ever manage to work my way through the book's 560+ pages, then I'll doubtless post some kind of review of the work here on Torpedo the Ark.  

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 18 November 1919, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 417. It should be noted that Lawrence hadn't at the time of writing this letter actually been to Paris and wasn't to make his first trip there until January 1924.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mark Gertler, [2 February 1924], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elzabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press 1987), p. 567. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, [24 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 561. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 24 January 1924, in Letters IV, p. 561. In the original German, Lawrence wrote: "Paris ist doch netter wie London, nicht so dunkel-grau. Die Leute sind ganz freundlich."

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, [25 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 563. 

      This letter has parallels with a short essay written at the same time in which Lawrence asserts that whilst Paris is still monumental and handsome, it has lost its true splendour, and become "like an old, weary peacock that sports a bunch of dirty twigs at its rump, where it used to have a tail". He blames this sorry state of affairs on: (i) modern democracy; (ii) too much bare flesh on display in French works of art;  (iii) an overly rich diet; and (iv) the dead weight of history and its architecture.

      See: 'Paris Letter', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 141-146. The line quoted is on p. 143.

      As for the idea of Paris disappointing: 

      "Disappointment, according to Stuart Walton, is actually a 'constitutive factor' in English speakers' experience of France, and its capital in particular: 'It is at least as important to the British, for example, that Paris should fall short of what they expect of it as it is to the Parisians that les Anglais have never really understood it' (p. 332)." 

      See Andrew Gallix's Introduction to We'll Never Have Paris, p. 29. And see also the TTA post 'On Disappointment' (24 May 2020) in which I discuss (amongst other things) le Syndrome de Paris: click here.  

        

[7] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, [31 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 565. 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Hon. Dorothy Brett, [4 February 1924], in Letters, IV, p. 568. The fact that Paris was, at one time, cheap to live in, was absolutely crucial:

      "Hemingway described Paris in the 1920s as a place 'where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were', adding that this was 'like having a great treasure given to you'. That treasured lifestyle was swept away by the onset of the Depression in the 1930s. As Will Ashon remarks, artists thrive where there is 'affordable, preferably semi-derelict, real estate. Which is to say, you can't be an artist in Paris, anymore, or in London either' (p. 301)." 

      See Andrew Gallix, Introduction to We'll Never Have Paris, p. 24.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, 3 April 1929, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 234. 

Those interested in knowing more about Lawrence's 1929 visit to Paris - and how his stay at 66, Boulevard de Montparnasse has now been officially commememorated with a plaque - might like to read Catherine Brown's blog post of 29 May 2019, available on her website: click here.     

 

And those interested in Lawrence's wider relationship with French culture, might like to read the following essay by Ginette Katz-Roy: 'D. H. Lawrence and "That Beastly France"', in The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 23, No. 2/3, (1991), pp. 143-156. This essay is available to download or read online via JSTOR: click here.   

 

 

Musical bonus: the debut single from Adam and the Ants, Young Parisians (Decca, 1978): click here. 

 

 

Lord, Open Thou My Lips ...

Andreea Anghel: 

Le Noir's Jesus Wound as a Vagina (2017)

saatchiart.com

 

I. Lord Jesus Crucified, I adore the Sacred Wound in thy most holy side ...

 

It's always amusing - and important - to be reminded that Christianity is not only a form of moral fanaticism but sexual perversion; that Jesus was not only full of his own righteousness (to the extent that he believed himself the Son of God), but gloried in his own suffering as a form of passion, only finding his consummation when nailed naked to a cross wearing a crown of thorns. 

 

The faithful to this day still delight in masochism and martydom and have a fetishistic fascination with the Five Holy Wounds left upon the body of their Lord [1]. Such loving devotion to the physical signs of cruelty inflicted upon the body of Christ - or what we might term stigmatophilia - has recently attracted the attention of scholars working within the area of queer studies and it's to their research that I turn here ...         

 

 

II. Domine labia mea aperies ut cunnum meum laude ut cantem

 

For those historians and theologians who choose to examine the life of Jesus through a queer lens, the question of his gender identity - and its representation in medieval art - is of significant interest. 

 

They are particularly fascinated by the gash in his side which undeniably appears to resemble a vulva, thus implying that the resurrected Christ - risen in his wholeness - possessed both male and female sex organs. This intersex (and gender-fluid) Christ figure radically challenges the more conventional ideas of him as purely male and, indeed, as a divine embodiment of the masculine ideal.                

 

In other words, long before J. G. Ballard and David Cronenberg fantasised about the new flesh and the flowering of wounds into sex organs that promised the possibility of perverse new pleasures, medieval Christians were opening their prayer books and touching and kissing images of Christ's wounds, to which they assigned miraculous properties.

 

Obviously, this was performed as an act of religious veneration. But to deny the kinky aspect would be absurd; believers were surely aware, for example, of the linguistic associations in Latin between the word for wound and the word for womb (vulna / vulva) and dismbodied wound images were often explicitly - not just symbolically - connected with the female sex organ from which blood seeps and new life is born [2]. 

 

  

III. Ostentatio Vulnerum

 

I'd like to close this post with another astonishing artwork ... Believed to be by Giovanni Antonio Galli and painted c. 1630,  it is usually known in English as Christ Displaying His Wounds, but could just as fittingly be called I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

 

I think most people would agree that it's an obscene and profoundly disturbing work; for the Christ figure appears to not only invite us to inspect his wound - which he draws open for this purpose - but to touch it and penetrate it, just as he challenged his apostle Thomas to do (John 20: 19-29). 

 

Again, one can't help thinking of Crash [3], in which that nightmare angel of the expressways Vaughan assumes the Christ role and flaunts his injuries and scars to his disciple Ballard whilst unfolding his perverse teachings centred on the mysterious eroticism of wounds. 

 

Indeed, I think that just as Vaughan imagined the whole world ending in one apocalyptic car crash, Christ secretly desired the flagellation and crucifixion of all mankind ... But that's a post for another day ...  

  

 

Source of image: 

Wikimedia Commons

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Jesus received numerous injuries in the course of his Passion, but medieval piety liked to particularly focus upon the five wounds associated directly with his crucifixion, i.e., the nail wounds on his hands and feet, as well as the wound made by the lance which pierced his side. Many prayers from this period, as well as later poems, paintings, and pieces of music inspired by the Sacred Wounds of Christ, have been preserved. The Rosary also helped to remind the faithful of Christ's suffering; for whilst the fifty small beads refer to Mary, the five large beads represent the Five Wounds of Christ. 

 

[2] Some medieval artists carried this idea to its logical end point and showed a human body - either that of a baby or a fully-grown adult - being birthed from the side wound and cleansed in the life-giving blood of Christ. This body is often said to symbolise the Church. 

 

[3] J. G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973). 

 

 

To read a related post to this one on stigmatophilia and sexual healing, click here.