Venus Smiles

Tabita Cargnel: Venus Smiles (2020) [a]

Photo © Dario Des Ciancolini from Vibes Art

 

 

'Venus Smiles' is another amusing short story by J. G. Ballard [b], at the centre of which is a sonic sculpture, commissioned by the tale's narrator - Hamilton - who sits on the Vermilion Sands Fine Arts Committee.

 

The artist responsible for the work, Lorraine Drexel, sounds like an interesting woman, going by Hamilton's description:

 

"This elegant and autocratic creature in a cartwheel hat, with her eyes like black orchids, was a sometime model and intimate of Giacometti and John Cage. Wearing a blue crêpe de Chine dress ornamented with lace serpents and other art nouveau emblems, she sat before us like some fugitive Salome from the world of Aubrey Beardsley. [...]

      She had lived in Vermilion Sands for only three months, arriving via Berlin, Calcutta and the Chicago New Arts Centre. Most of her sculpture to date had been scored for various Tantric and Hindu hymns, and I remembered her brief affair with a world-famous pop-singer, later killed in a car crash, who had been an enthusiastic devotee of the sitar. [...] She had shown us an album of her sculptures, interesting chromium constructions that compared favourably with the run of illustrations in the latest art magazines." [52]   

 

Unfortunately, the piece Miss Drexel produces for the central square of Vermilion Sands isn't quite what Hamilton and other committee members had hoped for; and it certainly isn't to the liking of the specially invited assembly of VIPs and members of the general public who witness its unveiling with a mixture of shock and anger. 

 

Even Hamilton's secretary, describes 'Sound and Quantum: Generative Synthesis 3' as "'nothing but a piece of old scrap iron'" [51] - one that makes an infernal racket as well as an ugly sight:

 

"With its pedestal the statue was twelve feet high. Three spindly metal legs, ornamented with spikes and crosspieces, reached up from the plinth to a triangular apex. Clamped on to this was a jagged structure that at first sight seemed to be an old Buick radiator grille. It had been bent into a rough U five feet across, and the two arms jutted out horizontally, a single row of sonic cores, each about a foot long, poking up like the teeth of an enormous comb. Welded on apparently at random all over the statue were twenty or thirty filigree vanes.

      That was all. The whole structure of scratched chromium had a blighted look like a derelict antenna." [53]   

 

Worse, once the acoustic drape is removed, the sculpture gave out an "intermittent high-pitched whine, a sitar-like caterwauling" [53]. After the furious crowd disperse and an insulted, but amused, Lorraine Drexel has skipped town, (keeping her $5000 fee), it's immediately agreed that the work should be removed. As no one else wants anything further to do with it, it is also decided that Hamilton should keep it:

 

"There was nowhere else to put the statue so I planted it out in the garden. Without the stone pedestal it was only six feet high. Shielded by the shrubbery, it had quietened down and now emitted a pleasant melodic harmony, its soft rondos warbling across the afternoon heat." [54]

 

Unfortunately, Hamilton's problems with the sculpture have only just begun ... A week or so later, Carol, Hamilton's secretary, notices that the thing is not only moving but changing shape. Further, it's rapidly expanding in size and beneath the surface rust Hamilton detects "a bright sappy glint" [56], as if the sculpture were alive, like some kind of strange tree coming into bud:

 

"Poking through the outer scale of chrome were a series of sharp little nipples. [...]

      Carefully I examined the rest of the statue. All over it new shoots of metal were coming through: arches, barbs, sharp double helixes, twisting the original statue into a thicker and more elaborate construction." [56] [c] 

Of course, Hamilton has the option to just chop this musical monster down. But he is curious to see how big it will grow. The answer is very big: and even after it eventually collapses under its own weight and "lay on its side in a huge angular spiral [...] like the skeleton of a futuristic whale" [58], its growth rate continued to accelerate. 

 

Thus, Hamilton is obliged to seek a solution in his tool shed: "Using the hacksaw, I cut off a two-foot limb and handed it to Dr. Blackett, an eccentric but amiable neighbour who sometimes dabbled in sculpture himself." [59]

 

The latter speculates (in a pseudo-scientific manner) about how the sculpture is managing to grow: "I imagine it's rapidly synthesizing an allotropic form of ferrous oxide. In other words, a purely physical rearrangement of the constituents of rust." [59] This might not be very plausible, but Hamilton's only other idea is that, before she left, Lorraine Drexel "had set some perverse jinx at work within the statue, a bizarre revenge on us all for deriding her handiwork" [58]. 

 

The good doctor is convinced that the process will soon reach a natural conclusion. However, the next morning Hamilton wakes up to find the thing breaking through his bedroom window and spreading across his garden: "It sounded as if a complete orchestra were performing some Mad Hatter's symphony out in the centre of the lawn." [60] 

 

At this point, Carol insists that Hamilton take up his hacksaw once more:

"The metal was soft and the blade sank through it quickly. I left the pieces I cut off in a heap to one side [...] Separated from the main body of the statue, the fragments were almost inactive [...] By two o'clock that afternoon I had cut back about half the statue and got it down to manageable proportions.

      'That should hold it,' I said to Carol. I walked round and lopped off a few of the noisier spars. 'Tomorrow I'll finish it off altogether.'" [60]

Unfortunately, that night, the monster plant-sculpture again bursts through Hamilton's bedroom window and a gigantic metal helix "hovered like a claw through the fractured pane" [61], its sonic core screaming down at him. The thing had grown back with a vengeance to twice its previous size:

"It lay all over the garden in a tangled mesh, like the skeleton of a crushed building. Already the advance tendrils had reached the bedroom windows, while others had climbed over the garage and were sprouting downwards through the roof, tearing away the galvanized metal sheets." [61]

Hamilton telephones his friend, Raymond Mayo, who comes over with an oxyacetylene torch and, after several hours of hard work, the thing is defeated; all that remains are heaps of scrap metal to be taken away by a local contractor to be melted down. That, though, isn't the end of the story ...

 

Firstly, Lorraine Drexel sues the Fine Arts Committe for destruction of her work and damage to her reputation. After ten months of legal wrangling, it's decided that Miss Drexel should be awarded $30,000. As if that wasn't bad enough, when leaving the newly built courthouse, a funny things happens: Hamilton realises the building is vibrating with a low rhythmic pulse.

 

It transpires that melted down parts from the sculpture had been used in the construction of the court and SQ:GS3 was now spreading and mutating like a virus all over Vermilion Sands . For as Hamilton realises, tiny fragments and molecular memory traces of the statue will be contained within "a dozen other buildings, in ships and planes and a million new automobiles" [65]. 

 

Soon, as Hamilton says, "'The whole world will be singing'" [65] and dancing to the strange abstracted sound of Lorraine Drexel's work ...      

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Inspired by the J. G. Ballard story we are to examine in this post, Venus Smiles is a sound sculpture by the German artist Tabita Cargnel. Consisting of resonating copper tubes suspended in a tensegrity type structure, it also functions as an instrument that can be played by one or more performers, whatever their musical background or competance. Tuned to the particular frequencies of the space in which it resides, Venus Smiles is designed to amplify acoustic properties, create novel interactions, and allow communication in a language beyond words. 

      For more information about her work, readers can visit Tabita Cargnel's website by clicking here. Alternatively, to see Venus Smiles being used as an instrument, visit her YouTube page by clicking here.

[b] See J. G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 51-65. Page numbers given in the above text refer to this edition. 

      'Venus Smiles' was originally entitled 'Mobile' and first published in the June 1957 edition of Science Fantasy (Vol. 8, No. 23). Ballard renamed and rewrote the tale for his collection of short stories  Vermilion Sands (Berkley Books, 1971). 

[c] One is reminded of D. H. Lawrence's poem 'Bare Almond Trees'. But whereras Ballard describes a metal artwork in terms of a living tree, Lawrence describes living trees in winter as possessing black, rusted trunks and looking like "iron implements twisted hideous, out of the earth". 

      See The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 253. The poem can also be read online at allpoetry.com: click here.   

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes (Notes on 'Prima Belladonna' by J. G. Ballard)

Ilaria Novelli (aka Ila Pop): Jane Ciracylides (2020) 

Mixed media painting on cotton paper (23 x 31 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

'Prima Belladonna' (1956) was J. G. Ballard's first published short story [a].

 

It can be found in the 1971 collection Vermilion Sands, which, according to the author, celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality.

 

The three male characters - Harry Miles, Tony Devine, and Steve Parker (the tale's narrator) - don't particularly interest; certainly not in the way that Jane Ciracylides - a singer who performs in a casino lounge at the Vermilion Sands resort - fascinates with her alien good looks:

 

"Whatever else they said about her, everyone had to agree she was a beautiful girl, even if her genetic background was a little mixed. The gossips at Vermilion Sands soon decided there was a good deal of mutant in her, because she had a rich patina-golden skin and what looked like insects for eyes [...]" [b] 

 

As Harry says, whilst he and his two friends voyeuristically perv on Jane as she parades around the apartment opposite "wearing almost nothing except a large metallic hat" [2] and revealing the "sinuous lines of her thighs and shoulders" [2], here is a goddess "'straight out of the primal apocalyptic sea'" [2]. 

 

Harry knows that in order to seduce such a woman, you need to approach her in a shy somewhat hesitating manner: "'Nothing urgent or grabbing.'" [2] This shows a lover's wisdom: for hesitation is the courage to go slowly; to resist the urge to violently seize hold of that which one desires.   

Not that Harry gets to put his hands on Jane. Rather, it's Parker to whom she seems attracted (even though, by his own confession, he is out of her league), after visiting his little shop of singing plants (choro-flora) the next morning and admiring his blooms: 

"She walked over to a bank of mixed ferns and stood looking at them. The ferns reached out towards her and trebled eagerly in their liquid fluted voices.

      'Aren't they sweet?' she said, stroking the fronds gently. 'They need so much affection.'" [5]

 

Reminiscing on their first meeting, Parker recalls: 

 

"Under the black beach robe her skin was a softer, more mellow gold, and it was her eyes that held me. I could see them under the wide-brimmed hat. Insect legs wavered delicately round two points of purple light." [5]

That's a rather disturbing description of Jane's eyes; not so much the two points of purple light at their centre, but the wavering insect legs that surround them. It reminds one of stories that appeared in the English press two or three years ago about a girl in India and a woman in Taiwan who had insects living in their eyes [c]. 

 

Uninterested in the plants Parker initially tries to sell her - a Sumatra Samphire and a Louisian Lute Lily - to make her new apartment feel less lonely, Jane slowly raised her hands in front of her breasts as if in prayer and moved towards the display counter on which stood a rare Khan-Arachnid orchid; "a difficult bloom, with a normal full range of twenty-four octaves" [3], which Parker regards as a fleur du mal.

"'How beautiful it is,' she said, gazing at the rich yellow and purple leaves hanging from the scarlet-ribbed vibrocalyx." [6] 

It's clear that Jane is something of a choro-floraphile - i.e., that her desire is more for the plants than the man. And equally clear is the effect this girl with the insect eyes has on the plants; as she admires the orchid its leaves stiffen and fill with colour:

"She stepped closer to the orchid and looked down into its malevolent head. The Arachnid quivered and the spines on its stem arched and flexed menacingly." [6]

 

And then to Parker's surprise - it sings to her:

 

"I had never heard the Arachnid sing before. I was lisening to it open-eared when I felt a glow of heat burn against my arm. I turned and saw the woman staring intently at the plant, her skin aflame, the insects in her eyes writhing insanely. The Arachnid stretched out towards her, calyx erect, leaves like blood-red sabres." [5] 

 

At the end of the performance, Jane gripped the edge of the vivarium in which the orchid grew and gathered herself: "Her skin dimmed and the insects in her eyes slowed to a delicate wavering." [6] 

 

She offers Parker a $1000 for the plant, which he declines. So she takes a lesser specimen of plant and, before leaving, invites him to come see her perform as a speciality singer at the Casino: "'You may find it interesting.'" [7]

 

Which, along with the entire audience, he does: "The next morning Vermilion Sands hummed. Jane created a sensation." [7] Harry and Tony are as smitten with her as the Arachnid, which Jane comes to visit every morning at the shop; "and her presence was more than the flower could bear [...] instead of running through its harmonic scales the orchid only screeched and whined" [9]. 

 

Jane seemed oblivious to the effect she was having. Finally, Parker tells her that she is causing the Arachnid great distress: "'Your voice may move men to strange and wonderful visions, but it throws that orchid into acute melancholia'" [10]. 

 

Actually, that's not quite the case; the orchid is suffering from a form of erotomania or what the French term amour fou. It both wanted to ravish and annihilate her at the same time. Parkin wonders what would happen were he to leave plant and woman alone together; would they try to sing each other to death? 

 

Eventually, despite all his misgivings about this strange (perhaps dangerous) golden-skinned woman who happily cheats at i-Go [d], Parker makes love to her: "'What's she like?' Tony asked eagerly. 'I mean, does she burn or just tingle?'" [12]

 

Their relationship seems to progress quite nicely:

 

"Sometimes in the late afternoons we'd drive out along the beach to the Scented Desert and sit alone by the pools [...] When the wind began to blow cool across the sand we'd slip down into the water [...]

      On other evenings we'd go down to one of the quiet bars at Lagoon West, and have supper out on the flats, and Jane would tease the waiters and sing honeybirds and angelcakes to the children who came in across the sands to watch her.

      [...] I never questioned myself too closely over my affair  with Jane Ciracylides. As I sat on the balcony with her looking out over the cool early evenings or felt her body glowing beside me in the darkness I allowed myself few anxieties." [12-13] 

 

But all good things must come to an end ... And one night, Parker discovers Jane in his flower store:

 

"The lights had been turned out, but a brilliant glow filled the shop, throwing a golden fire on to the tanks along the counters. Across the ceiling liquid colours danced in reflection. 

      The Arachnid had grown to three times its size. It towered nine feet high out of the shattered lid of the control tank, leaves tumid and uflamed, its calyx as large as a bucket, raging insanely.  

      Arched forwards into it, her head thrown back, was Jane." [14]     

 

 I'll leave it to readers - as Ballard does - to decide what exactly is going on here. But Parker seems to feel Jane is in danger; he runs over and tries to pull her clear. But she pushes his hand away ... 

Harry and Tony arrive on the scene and find their friend Steve sitting on the stairs at the entrance to his little shop of horrors. Although they attempt to enter, Parker holds them back and jams the door shut:

 

"I never saw Jane again. The three of us waited in my apartment. When the music died away we went down and found the shop in darkness. The Arachnid had shrunk to its normal size. 

      The next day it died." [14]

     

 

II. 

 

Of course, some might argue that the orchid was fortunate to meet its destruction in this manner; that the morbid horror of love always ends tragically in ruinous expenditure and that eroticism is a blissful betrayal of the will to self-preservation.

 

Perhaps Ballard's story should be read as an example of a symbiotic relationship in which two species and two strains of love collide, both spiraling together "into a helix of strangely suspended disintegration" and each competing "to exceed the other in mad vulnerability" [e].

 

Having said that, the book ends with Steve Parker warning any choro-florist who happens to own a Khan-Arachnid orchid, to watch out for a golden-skinned woman with insect eyes: "Perhaps she'll play i-Go with you, and I'm sorry to have to say it, but she'll always cheat." [15]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The story first appeared in Science Fantasy, vol. 7, issue 20, (1956).

 

[b] J. G. Ballard, 'Prima Belladonna', in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), p. 1. Future page references given in the text refer to this edition. I'll say more about this 'insects for eyes' remark shortly.  

 

[c] See the case reported in March 2018 of the Indian schoolgirl who, over a ten day period, had sixty dead ants removed from her eyes by a doctor at the local hospital, after complaining to her parents of pain and inflammation: click here. 

      And see the case from April 2019 involving a 28-year-old Taiwanese woman found by doctors to have four tiny sweat bees inside her eye; they were successfully removed (alive) by a doctor, who carefully pulled them out by the legs: click here.      

 

[d] i-Go is a fictional game described in 'Prima Belladonna' as "a sort of decelerated chess"; see The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, p. 1.

 

[e] Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 189.  

 

 

Fox Tales

Photo of a fox in the backgarden 

by Maria Thanassa (2021)

 

 

I. 

 

Despite new laws to prevent animal cruelty coming into force in June as part of the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act, a secretly-filmed video emerged online over Christmas showing a 48-year-old man in Essex killing a fox with a garden fork. 

 

The sickening footage, captured by North London Hunt Saboteurs and passed to ITV News, shows the poor creature emerging from its den and into the jaws of a waiting dog, before then being stabbed repeatedly by the man, who leaves the scene of the crime carrying the dead animal with him.    

 

Essex Police later arrested the man on suspicion of offences under the Hunting Act 2004, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Wild Mammal Protection Act 1996. Whilst initially held in custody, he has now been released under investigation. 

 

A government minister, Zac Goldsmith, has described the incident as grotesque and called for further action to be taken. And indeed, let us hope that the man is given the maximum sentence for animal cruelty of five years and the largest possible fine (though, personally, I would like to see a far harsher punishment inflicted).     

 

 

II.

 

Back in January of this year, I had my own encounter with a fox, who was sitting under a bush in the backgarden, just resting peacefully in the winter sun, looking straight at me. I wasn't sure, but I guessed from its size it was a dog-fox in its prime, with a thick handsome coat of golden-red fur and a snow white belly.

 

For me, it was a magical encounter, as I knew it would be for Maria whom I called to come look - and, indeed, she spoke of nothing else for days afterwards, describing it as her March moment, referencing the queer relationship between fox and woman in D. H. Lawrence's novella 'The Fox' ...*

 

 

III.  

 

Admittedly, March intends to shoot the fox that is carrying off the hens reared on the little farm owned by herself and her friend Banford, but he is too clever and too quick to let himself be killed by either woman:

 

"The fox really exasperated them both. As soon as they had let the fowls out, in the early summer mornings, they had to take their guns and keep guard: and then again, as soon as the evening began to mellow, they must go once more. And he was so sly. He slid along in the deep grass [...] And he seemed to circumvent the girls deliberately. Once or twice March had caught sight of the white tip of his brush, or the ruddy shadow of him in the deep grass, and she had let fire at him. But he made no account of this." [9-10]   

One evening, however, whilst standing with her back to the sunset, her gun under her arm, and her hair pushed under her cap, March has a revelatory encounter with the fox:

"She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met her eyes. And he knew her. She was spell-bound. She knew he knew her. So he looked into her eyes, and her soul failed her. He knew her, he was not daunted. 

      She struggled, confusedly she came to herself, and saw him making off, with slow leaps leaping over some fallen boughs, slow, impudent jumps. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and ran smoothly away. She saw his brush held smooth like a feather, she saw his white buttocks twinkle. And he was gone, softly, soft as the wind." [10]

 

Gone - but certainly not forgotten and, after supper, she went out to look for the fox:

 

"For  he had lifted his eyes upon her, and his knowing look seemed to have entered her brain. She did not so much think of him: she was possessed by him. She saw his dark, shrewd, unabashed eye looking into her, knowing her. She felt him invisibly master her spirit. She knew the way he lowered his chin as he looked up, she knew his muzzle, the golden brown, and the greyish white. And again, she saw him glance over his shoulder at her, half inviting, half contemptuous and cunning." [11] 

It is several days before she mentions anything of all this to Banford: and, several months later, she is still (unconsciously) dominated by thoughts of the fox:

"Whenever she fell into her odd half-muses, when she was half rapt, and half intelligently aware of what passed under her vision, then it was the fox which somehow dominated her unconsciousness, possessed the blank half of her musing. And so it was for weeks, and months. No matter whether she had been climbing the trees for apples, [...] digging out the ditch from the duck-pond, or clearing out the barn, when she had finished, or when she straightened herself, and pushed the wisps of hair away again from her forehead, [...] then was sure to come over her mind the old spell of the fox, as it came when he was looking at her. It was as if she could smell him, at these times. And it always recurred, at unexpected moments, just as she was going to sleep at night, or just as she was pouring the water into the teapot, to make tea - there it was, the fox, it came over her like a spell." [12]  

 

One day, when a young stranger (Henry Grenfel) appears at her door, March (fatefully) identifies him with the fox (which, poor creature, Henry will later shoot and skin):

 

"Whether it was the thrusting forward of the head, or the glisten of fine whitish hairs on the ruddy cheek-bones, or the bright, keen eyes, that can never be said: but the boy was to her the fox, and she could not see him otherwise." [14]

 

On the night of Henry's arrival March has the following vivid dream:

 

"She dreamed she heard a singing outside, which she could not understand, a singing that roamed round the house, in the fields and in the darkness. It moved her so, that she felt she must weep. She went out, and suddenly she knew it was the fox singing. He was very yellow and bright, like corn. She went nearer to him, but he ran away, and ceased singing. He seemed near, and she wanted to touch him. She stretched out her hand, but suddenly he bit her wrist, and at the same instant, as she drew back, the fox, turning round to bound away, whisked his brush across her face, and it seemed his brush was on fire, for it seared and burned her mouth with great pain. She awoke with the pain of it, and lay trembling as if she were really seared." [20]

 

Now, you might think that March would take this as a warning against involvement with Henry, the werefox with an invisible smile. But no - reader, she married him! 

 

Still, that's another story and not really my concern in this post where I simply wanted to make the point that human-animal encounters can be truly inspiring and leave a tremendous impression upon us, if only we allow the spirit of the animal to enter into communion with our own. 

 

Thus, if you are ever lucky enough to encounter a fox close up, then I suggest that rather than reach for a gun or a garden fork - or even a camera - you just give yourself up to the moment before going your separate way in peace and gratitude.            

 

 

* D. H. Lawrence, 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 5-71. All page references given in the text refer to this edition. 

 

  

Silent Night Vs Non-Time (A Christmas Message)

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht

 

 

I. 

 

What, more than anything, do we need to rediscover this Christmas in order to release us from the anxiety, the noise, the frenzy, and the coarseness of life in 2021? 

 

The answer is the kind of life hinted at within the popular Christmas carol Silent Night - a life wherein all is calm and we can sleep in heavenly peace; i.e., collect ourselves, gather our senses, and know a sense of blissful conclusion, rather than empty duration in which no rest is possible; a life wherein we understand that even the darkness is, paradoxically, bright.      

 

 

II. 

 

Composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber - with lyrics by Joseph Mohr [1] - Silent Night not only holds out the (in my view false) promise of Christian redemption, but speaks of a time which is now lost to us, one in which each day begins and ends in prayer and the year is marked by holy days and festive events. 

 

As Byung-Chul Han notes:

 

"The medieval calendar did not just serve the purpose of counting days. Rather, it was based on a story in which the festive days represent narrative resting points. They are fixed points within the flow of time, providing narrative bonds so that the time does not simply elapse. The festive days form temporal sections which structure time and give it a rhythm. They function like the sections of a story, and let time and its passing appear meaningful. Each section of a story completes a narrative section, and this provisional completion prepares the next stage of the narrative. The temporal sections are meaningful transitions within an overall narrative frame. The time of hope, the time of joy, and the time of farewell merge into each other." [2]   

 

Of course one has reservations about all this - but then so too does one have reservations about living (and perishing) in the Un-Zeit [3] of today when life has lost "more and more of the breadth that would give it duration [... and] become more rushed, less perspicuous and more directionless" [4]. 

Sadly, in the 24/7 world of non-time, there can be no silent night, holy night, when all is calm, all is bright; and we can never sleep in heavenly peace ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The English translation of Stille Nacht was written by John Freeman Young in 1859, based on three of Mohr's original six verses. In 1998, the Silent Night Museum (in Oberndorf) commissioned a new English translation by Bettina Klein of the German lyrics. For the most part, Klein leaves the Young translation unchanged, but occasionally it differs significantly in order to be more faithful to the original text. 

      As for the melody that is generally used today - a slow meditative lullaby  - this differs only slightly from Gruber's original.

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2017), p. 88. 

      D. H. Lawrence puts this idea in more poetic (and openly religious) terms:

       

"The rhythm of life itself was preserved by the Church hour by hour, day by day, season by season, year by year, epoch by epoch [...] We feel it, in the south, in the country, where we hear the jangle of bells at dawn, at noon, at sunset, marking the hours with the sound of mass or prayers. It is the rhythm of the daily sun. We feel it in the festivals, the processions, Christmas, the Three Kings, Easter, Pentecost, St John's Day, All Saints, All Souls. This is the wheeling of the year, the movement of the sun through solstice and equinox, the coming of the seasons, the going of the seasons. And it is the inward rhythm of man and woman too, the sadness of Lent, the delight of Easter, the wonder of Pentecost, the fires of St John, the candles on the graves of All Souls, the lit-up tree of Christmas, all representing kindled rhythmic emotions in the souls of men and women."

      See: A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 322-23.

[4] Byung-Chul Han's translator Daniel Steuer notes that 'non-time' is a neologism with the stress on the prefix which "expresses a negation that turns something positive or neutral into something negative". He continues: "'Non-time' and its derivatives [...] do not refer so much to an inopportune moment, or an anachonism, but to a particular modality of time itself". See note 1 to chapter 1 of Byung-Chul Han's The Scent of Time, pp. 115-16. 

      We might best summarise the idea by saying that non-time results when life is deprived of every form of meaningful closure (including death); when the present is no longer framed by past and future and is just made up of moments lacking in continuity; "an empty duration without beginning or end", as Han puts it [ibid., p. 7]. 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time, p. 11. 

 

 

Thanks to Louise Tucker for providing the image upon which my illustration is based.

My Sister and I

My Sister and I (Dec 1967)

 

"The warm and lovely world we knew, has been struck by a bitter frost.

But my sister and I, recall with a sigh, the world we knew, and loved, and lost." [1]

 

 

Like Herr Nietzsche, I also have a sister called Elizabeth (named after a princess). And like Herr Nietzsche, I also have a somewhat troubled relationship with my sibling who, for the record, is eleven years my senior. 

 

But whereas Nietzsche's sister was keen to take control of her brother's archive after his collapse and capitalise upon his growing fame throughout Europe [2], it seems that my sister would rather eradicate all traces of my existence.

 

Thus, for example, not only did she remove and destroy all of my childhood toys, games, and treasured possessions from our parental home (with my mother's acquiescence, but without my knowledge or consent), but she has now searched through all of her family photograph albums in order to find any pictures of me, so that these too might be removed. 

 

To be fair, she didn't burn or bin these pictures (or try to sell them on eBay). Rather, she presented the images to me so that I may do with them as I please; this includes the photo above, taken in December 1967.    

 

This censorship of images and editing (or falsification) of the past is reminiscent of what went on in the Soviet Union under Stalin, although my sister is driven by sibling resentment rather than political expediency; i.e., it's an act of spite rather than propaganda.  

But whatever the motivation, it's all a bit of shame, really. But there you go - all families operate with a degree of dysfunction, don't they? And, to be honest, I don't feel inclined to apologise for having been born (I'm just pleased to have the pictures).     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from My Sister and I, a song written by Hy Zaret, Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer, recorded by Jimmy Dorsey, with vocals by Bob Eberly. It hit number one on the Billboard charts on June 7, 1941. Click here to play on YouTube.

[2] In 1889, aged 45, Nietzsche suffered a collapse in Turin and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, until his death in 1900. 

      As curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts, Elisabeth used her brother's unpublished writings to promote her own agenda, wilfully overlooking his philosophical views when they conflicted with her nationalism and antisemitism. 

      Readers who are interested in this topic should see Carol Diethe's Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power, (University of Illinois Press, 2003), in which she demonstrates how Elisabeth's desire to place herself - not her brother - at the center of German cultural life damaged his reputation for many years.

      Readers might also enjoy the apocryphal work attributed to Nietzsche entitled My Sister and I, trans. Oscar Levy (1951). This book - which most scholars consider a forgery - was supposedly written in 1889-90, during Nietzsche's time in a mental asylum. If legitimate, My Sister and I would be Nietzsche's final text, chronologically following his Wahnbriefe. Amongst several highly contentious (and otherwise unreported) biographical claims, the book details an incestuous relationship between Nietzsche and his sister Elisabeth. 

Revenge of the Macaques

Image: Suresh Jadhav for News18

 

That man and monkey be redeemed from the spirit of revenge - 

that for me is the bridge to our highest hope ... [1]

 

 

Well, it's clear now from recent news reports coming out of India that our simian friends are not Christian and do not believe in turning the other cheek [1], nor leaving vengeance in the paws of their god [2] ...

After a pack of dogs killed an infant macaque, an enraged troop of rhesus monkeys have launched a merciless month-long campaign of revenge, grabbing around 250 puppies off the streets and then throwing them to their death from atop buildings and trees.  

According to some reports, when the troop can no longer find any young canines, they begin chasing terrified schoolchildren and one unfortunate eight-year-old had to be physically rescued from their clutches. Other villagers have apparently been injured attempting to protect their pooches.

 

Thankfully, such organised primate attacks on other species are rare, although not unknown. And it certainly isn't the case that they are the only animals other than man who seek revenge; camels, elephants, lions, crows, are all known to enjoy getting their own back. 

 

Indeed, even some fish have been known to engage in what Francis Bacon (disapprovingly) termed wild justice ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche writing in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II. 7 - 'On the Tarantulas'.

 

[2] Matthew 5:38-39 - "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

[3] Romans 12:19 - "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay', saith the Lord."

Chastity (Or the Peace That Comes of Fucking)

 

I. 

 

One of the most surprising things about Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), is that it closes with an affirmation of chastity, or what Oliver Mellors likes to call the peace that comes of fucking. 

 

In his Grange Farm letter to Connie, he informs her of his intention to remain patient during their time apart and abide by the little flame that burns between them, trying not to think of her too often, as this only tortures him and wastes something vital [1]. 

 

He writes: 

 

"So I love chastity now, because it is the peace that comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause and peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. [...] Now is the time to be chaste, it is so good to be chaste, like a river of cool water in my soul. I love the chastity now that flows between us. It is like fresh water and rain. How can men want wearisomely to philander. What a misery to be like Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace [...]" [2]  

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, this real and accomplished chastity [3] won't come as too great a surprise to readers who are familiar with Lawrence's Pansies, a collection of verse written in 1928/29 in which the cry of noli me tangere rings throughout and the theme of chastity - understood as freedom from the mind and hands exploiting the sensual body [4] - is key.

 

"Great is my need to be chaste / and apart, in this cerebral age" [5], writes the poet for whom sex is a state of grace. All he wishes of a woman is that she shall feel gently towards him when his heart feels kindly towards her: "I am so tired of violent women lashing out and insisting / on being loved, when there is no love in them" [6].

 

Touch comes slowly, writes Lawrence, if ever; "when the white mind sleeps" [7] and cannot be forced: 

 

For if, cerebrally, we force ourselves into touch, into contact 

physically and fleshly, 

we violate ourselves,

we become vicious. [8] 

 

All of these ideas coalesce in the poem 'Chastity' -

 

Chastity, beloved chastity

O beloved chastity

how infinitely dear to me

chastity, beloved chastity!

 

That my body need not be

fingered by the mind,

or prosituted by the dree

contact of cerebral flesh -

 

O leave me clean from mental fingering

from the cold copulation of the will,

from all the white, self-conscious lechery

the modern mind calls love!

 

From all the mental poetry

of deliberate love-making,

from all the false felicity

of deliberately taking

 

the body of another unto mine,

O God deliver me!

leave me alone, let me be!

 

Chastity, dearer far to me

that any contact that can be

in this mind-mischievous age! [9]     

 

III. 

 

Lawrence's notion of chastity is, therefore, distinct from the Christian virtue synonymous with moral purity and closely tied to an ideal of celibacy. 

 

In fact, if anything, Lawrence's model of chastity is closer to Nietzsche's than the Church's and he would doubtless echo Zarathustra in saying that whilst with some Christians chastity may indeed be a virtue, with many others it is almost a vice; such persons may exercise self-restraint, but doggish lust looks enviously out of all that they do.  

 

It is preferable, says Zarathustra, to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the arms of a person driven by lust in which there is no innocence. Individuals who find it difficult to be chaste - and whom it makes resentful and cruel as well as lustful - should be dissuaded from it. 

 

Only those for whom chastity is a form of victory - the peace that comes of fucking - should practice it; for they are kinder (and warmer) of heart and know how to laugh even at their own selves:   

 

"They laugh at chastity too and ask, 'What is chastity? Is chastity not folly? Yet this folly came to us, not we to it. We offered that guest hostel and heart: now it dwells with us - may it stay as long as it will!" [10]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It's debatable what this means, but I read it as a coded confession from a fetishistic masturbator who was previously only too happy to sleep with Connie's flimsy silk nightdress pressed atween his legs at night, for company. See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterleys Lover and A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 249. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, p. 301. 

[3] See A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, where Lawrence uses this phrase, writing: "Years of honest thought of sex, and years of struggling action in sex will bring us at last where we want to get, to our real and accomplished chastity [...]", p. 309. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), see Chapter X. The line quoted from is on p. 146.  

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Noli me tangere', The Poems, p. 407. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'All I ask', The Poems, p. 415. 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Touch comes', The Poems, p. 408.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Touch', The Poems, p. 406. 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'Chastity', The Poems, p. 407. 

[10] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I. 13, 'On Chastity', in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin Books, 1988), p. 167.

Don't Touch Me!

Angry weasel by zee1975

imgur.com

 

Noli me tangere, touch me not! / O you creatures of mind, don't touch me!

O you with human fingers, O never put your hand on me!

O you with your human bodies, stay a little distance from me! [1]

Whilst it's true that the term touch, along with tenderness, has a privileged role to play within D. H. Lawrence's phallic vocabulary [2], that doesn't mean that he was always comfortable with people putting their paws on him, particularly in an intimate manner that violates his animal integrity.

Thus, in an amusing verse probably written in 1916 [3], the male protagonist is not best pleased when he is told by his lover, a married woman, that he shouldn't be shy or ashamed of his nakedness; that he should allow her to see and touch and enjoy his body:

 

She said to me: What an instrument, your body!

single and perfectly distinct from everything else!

What a tool in the hands of the Lord!  

 

Just as she once handled her father's riding-whip as a child, and his pens - feeling something surge through her when she touched them - now she wished to grab hold of him and possess his male beauty:

I wish I could grip you like the fist of the Lord,

and have you -

 

This, however, places a constraint upon his heart, leaving him feeling trammelled and hurt. He replies:

 

No tool, no instrument, no God!

Don't touch me and appreciate me.

It is an infamy.

 

And then, somewhat astonishingly, he compares himself to an adder lying in the sun, a young bull in a field, and a weasel on a fence:

 

You would think twice before you touched a weasel on a fence

as it lifts its straight white throat.

Your hand would not be so flig and easy. 

 

What he wants is that she not only recognise his singular beauty, but respect it by hesitating somewhat before reaching forward to caress him. For as Lawrence writes in a later cycle of poems, touch comes slowly, if at all, as a form of trust developing not out of desire, but chastity [4].

 

That's an important point I think (particularly if one wishes to understand Lawrence's complex notion of touch). 

 

But, arguably, it's even more important to acknowledge what Lawrence is telling us here about wild animals; that they hate to be stroked, cuddled, picked up, or petted by humans and so we should refrain from trying to touch them in an inappropriately familiar manner if and when we are fortunate enough to encounter them. 

 

If you want to show how much you admire and care for a wild creature, let it be; respect it in its otherness and acknowledge the pathos of distance that exists between you.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I've slightly altered the opening lines from D. H. Lawrence's poem 'Noli me tangere', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 406-07. Italics added.

 

[2] See Annabel Banks, 'Voli Me Tangere: Touch and Tenderness in the Lady Chatterley Novels', Postgraduate English - a Journal and Forum for Postgraduates in English hosted by Durham University - No. 32 (2016). Readers who wish to dowload the full text as a pdf should click here.

 

[3] The poem, 'She Said As Well to Me', is part of the collection Look! We Have Come Through! and can be found in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 208-09. It can also be found online: click here.

 

[4] See the Pansies 'Chastity', 'Let us talk, let us laugh', and 'Touch comes', in The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 407-09. And for a follow on post to this one in which I discuss the idea of chastity in Lawrence (and Nietzsche), click here.  

 

 

This post is for animal rights activist and Lawrentian David Brock. 

Look Don't Touch (Notes on Art and Haptic Compulsion)

 Image credit: Raul Arboleda / AFP / Getty Images

 

 

I. 

 

Touching objects is surely a vital activity. But just as green grocers don't like you handling the fruit and veg, so gallery owners seem to have a real problem with people touching works of art on display. 

 

Obviously, there are practical reasons for this; dirt particles and perspiration on the hands can stain or, over time, cause serious damage to the surface of a sculpture, for example, which it might be difficult (or even impossible) to repair. Whilst porous materials, such as wood or stone, are particularly vulnerable, even works made of bronze or stainless steel, are not entirely immune to damage. 

 

Thus, in public art museums the world over there are signs reading do not touch, white boundary lines marked on the floor, and security guards lurking nearby to ensure people keep their distance. The curators want the public to engage with the art and be inspired by it, but they want them to do so with their eyes whilst keeping their filthy paws off. 

 

Oh, and just to be clear, kissing statues is also strictly forbidden and very much frowned upon.   

 

 

II. 

 

Practical concerns aside, there are clearly other issues at play here; aesthetics is founded upon an ideal of detachment and enforcement of the golden rule of look don't touch. Nietzsche, however, mocks this ability to gaze upon beauty apparently free of all desire as immaculate perception and suggests that objective contemplation is very often a disguised form of emasculated leering: click here for a post in which I discuss this. 

 

We see this aesthetic idealism expressed in Byung-Chul Han's 2015 work Die Errettung des Schönen (trans. rather prosaically in English as Saving Beauty (2018)), where he writes disapprovingly of Jeff Koons's sculptures on the grounds that their ultra-smooth surfaces not only reflect a social imperative lacking in all negativity, but cause "a 'haptic compulsion' to touch them, even the desire to suck them" [1].

 

Han writes: 

 

"It is the positivity of smoothness alone that causes the haptic compulsion. It invites the observer to take an attitude without distance, to touch. An aesthetic judgement, however, presupposes a contemplative distance. The art of the smooth abolishes such distance." [2]     

 

Like Hegel, Byung-Chul Han wants art to be meaningful and that requires visual appreciation. For sight, along with hearing, is a theoretical sense that allows us to interpret, judge, and reflect upon a work. Smelling, tasting, or touching an object might inform us of its material reality and sensible qualities, but won't enable us to make profound sense of it as an artwork. 

 

And like Roland Barthes, Byung-Chul Han believes the sense of touch to be "'the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight which is the most magical'" [3]. Why? Because whilst the latter preserves distance, the former negates it. To touch an object is to demystify it and make it available for enjoyment and consumption: "The sense of touch destroys the negativity of what is wholly other. It secularizes what it touches." [4]

 

For Han, Jeff Koons's seamless sculptures may embody "a perfect and optimized surface without depth and shallows" [5], but so do soap bubbles made of air and emptiness and as any West Ham fan will tell you, there's no real salvation to be found in blowing bubbles ...  

 

 

III.

 

The problem is, whilst I might agree with many aspects of Han's critique of smoothness, I'm a little more ambivalent on the subject than him (and I also like the work of Jeff Koons, as discussed in a recent post: click here).

 

Further, it seems to me that professor of museum studies, Fiona Candlin, is right to call for a radical rethinking of aesthetics as it has traditionally been conceived and to challenge the idea of art museums as sites of visual learning. In her 2010 study, Art, Museums and Touch, Candlin demonstrates that touch was - and remains - of crucial importance within the history, theory, practice, and appreciation of art, whilst, at the same time, contesting ideas of touch as an unmediated and uncomplex (i.e., primitive and inferior) mode of discovery [6].     

 

Having spent many years investigating why visitors to galleries and museums often can't help reaching out to (illicitly) touch exhibits, Candlin shows just how common this is. Whether those moonlike philosophers who wish us all to simply gaze upon life like it or not, the fact is many people want to physically touch objects they admire and don't like to think of art as something out of bounds and out of reach (nor do they wish to creep around a gallery speaking in hushed tones as if in a church surrounded by sacred relics).

 

Ultimately, perhaps this haptic compulsion is not a sign of an obsessive disorder, nor the mark of a philistine, but, rather a form of resistance to an overly visual (virtual) world. And perhaps sculptures today should be exhibited in darkened rooms where visitors in blindfolds are invited to feel their way around, physically interacting with objects and one another, groping their way into a future democracy; the democracy of touch [7].         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 3.  

[2] Ibid.

[3] Roland Barthes writing in Mythologies, quoted by Byung-Chul Han in Saving Beauty, p. 4.

[4] Byung-Chul an, Saving Beauty, p.  4.

 

[5] Ibid. 

[6] See Fiona Candlin, Art, Museums and Touch, (Manchester University Press, 2010).  

 

[7] The democracy of touch is an idea found in D. H. Lawrence's late work. I have written several posts discussing the idea; click here, for example, or here. 

      Interestingly, however, Lawrence isn't always pro-touch; see for example what he says in Chapter X of Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922) about "hands exploiting the sensual body, in feeling, in fingering, and in masturbation". 

      As for aesthetics, whilst Lawrence doesn't feel the English are devoid of feeling for the plastic arts, he does believe them to be full of fear for the body and that this fear distorts their vision and instinctive-intuitive consciousness. Thus it is, says Lawrence, that even those intellectuals and critics who get an ecstatic thrill from looking at artworks are "only undergoing a cerebral excitation" and remain essentially unmoved and untouched. See 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 182-217. The line I quote from is on p. 190.    

 

   

The Day of the Golden Jackal

Canis aureus

 

 

Golden jackals are small wolf-like canids, about three times the size of a red fox, native to Southeast Europe and parts of Asia, with a lovely coloured coat (the golden base shade varying seasonally from a pale creamy yellow to a dark tawny), though, fortunately, not one prized by the fur trade, as it is quite coarse in texture and relatively short in length. 

 

And, I'm pleased to report, their numbers and range have been rapidly expanding during the last few decades. Indeed, you can now find jackals living, hunting and howling in many parts of Central and Northeastern Europe, occupying areas where there are few or no wolves, but abundant food and shelter. 

 

It has been estimated by the IUCN that whilst there may be fewer than 17,000 wolves left in Europe, there are around 117,000 jackals - and the more the merrier, I say, although, of course, all the usual suspects - such as farmers - raise their familiar objections and even poets warn: "We should never have let the jackals loose, and patted them on the head. They were feeding on our death all the while."

 

Sadly, therefore, these intelligent and sociable animals continue to be hunted in many countries and in the charming region of Transcaucasia, where they still associate jackals (as carrion-eaters) with the underworld, they are caught with large fishing hooks baited with meat and suspended three feet from the ground with wire (as the jackals can only reach the meat by jumping, they are then hooked by the lip or jaw). 

 

May the great jackal-headed god Anubis bite off the hands and tear out the throats of those who practice such cruelty ...