The Best Things in Life Are Dirty: Reflections on Malcolm McLaren's Nostalgie de la boue

Malcolm McLaren and friends in a photo taken outside 

Nostalgia of Mud by Neil MacKenzie Matthews (1982)

 

 

 

I. 

 

The phrase nostalgie de la boue was coined in 1855 by the French playwright Émile Augier [1]. 

 

It refers to a decadent attraction to primitive culture or a yearning for some form of debased experience outside of what is regarded as socially and morally acceptable according to the bourgeois norms and conventions of European civilisation [2].     

 

One might even think of it in terms of Freud's death drive; i.e., as a desire on the part of complex life to revert to an earlier stage of evolution that allows one to contentedly wallow in a primordial mud pool (though when Augier used the phase he was thinking of the desire to return to humble social origins, rather than the origins of life [3]). 

 

For me, the phrase nostalgie de la boue has a further resonance, however; one that is rooted in the music and fashion of the early-mid 1980s - a time of buffalo gals, b-boys, hobo-punks, and Zulus on a time bomb ...

 

 

II.

 

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood opened their new (short-lived) West End shop in March 1982. Located at 5, St. Christopher's Place, it was spitting distance from Selfridges (but a long way from King's Road). 

 

Ben Westwood recalls:

 

"The shop front was covered by a 3-D relief of the map of the world made out of plaster and coloured mud brown. The interior featured the cave-like look of an archaeological dig. Scaffolding surrounded the walls, brown tarpaulin was stretched across the ceiling and a central pillar (or stalagmite) rose out of a bubbling pool of oily liquid." [4]

 

What Ben doesn't offer is an explanation for the name of the shop - Nostalgia of Mud - except to say that this was also the name of Vivienne and Malcolm's inspired Worlds End collection for A/W 1983 [5]. 

 

Keen-eyed readers will immediately notice the unusual translation of the original French phrase discussed above; nostalgia of mud, rather than the more standard nostalgia for mud. 

 

I don't know why this was so: I doubt that Malcolm wished to assign agency to the mud, as if it were the earth itself yearning for something. Probably he just mistranslated or misremembered the phrase. It doesn't really matter, I suppose - and, to be honest, I rather like the idiosyncratic reworking of nostalgie de la boue. 

 

As to when McLaren first heard the phrase, or from where he took it, again, I don't know ... 

 

Paul Gorman reminds us in his biography of McLaren, that it can be found in Tom Wolfe's famous essay 'Radical Chic' (1970), where it is used to mock those rich white liberals who host fundraising parties for revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers and thus seemingly endorse a brand of militant radicalism that would violently drag them from their own elevated social position [6].  

 

But I'm not convinced that McLaren took the phrase from Wolfe. And even if he did, he means something very different from what the American author means by it, giving the term mud a wholly positive new interpretation [7]. 

 

Anyway, let's close by giving the last word to Malcolm himself: 

 

"I wanted the shop to look permanently closed down, making it appear as if we were digging up the place to find the London that lay under the pavements and eventually I found that all that lay under there was mud." [8]

 

        

viviennewestwood.com

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Émile Augier, Le Mariage d'Olympe (1855), Act I, Scene I. 

      Interestingly, however, as Rosalind Krauss points out, the expression nostalgie de la boue "is not in fact idiomatic French; indeed, it is not part of spoken French usage at all, being instead a purely Anglophonic invocation of the English notion of slumming transposed into the magically resonant frame of a supposedly French turn of phrase". See her essay 'Nostalgie de la Boue', in October, Vol. 56, (The MIT Press, Spring, 1991), pp. 111-120. The line quoted is on p. 112.

 

[2] Sir Clifford Chatterley famously accuses his wife of being "'one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after depravity, the nostalgie de la boue'" after she confesses her affair with the gamekeeper. Suddenly seeing himself as the embodiment of moral goodness, Clifford regards Connie and Mellors as "the incarnation of mud, of evil". 

      See Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 296.

 

[3] In Act I, Scene I of Le Mariage d'Olympe, Augier wrote: "Mettez un canard sur un lac au milieu des cygnes, vous verrez qu’il regrettera sa mare et finira par y retourner." We might trans-paraphrase this as: Put a duck rocker amongst clean-cut new romantics, and you'll see that he soon longs for a muddy hole that he can retreat to. 

 

[4] Ben Westwood writing in a post entitled 'Nostalgia of Mud' on the World's End blog (20 Feb 2014): click here. Note I have very slightly modified the text. 

      

[5] Rather than try to describe this collection, I encourage readers to watch a ten minute video posted by Ben Westwood on YouTube, which affords a glimpse of the magical scenes that unfolded on the catwalk in the Pillar Hall (Olympia), on 24 March, 1982: click here. 

 

[6] Tom Wolfe's essay, 'Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's', originally appeared in New York magazine (June 8, 1970): click here to read online. Paul Gorman mentions it in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 496. 

      For my take on the question of radical chic - with reference to the case of AOC - click here.  

 

[7] As I wrote in an earlier post, for McLaren, the term mud implied more than merely low-life experience or primitive culture. It was a glorious synonym for authenticity, something that he has always striven for in his work; the true look of music and the real sound of fashion (even though he surely knew, as a reader of Wilde, that realism is just a pose and authenticity merely another form of fabricated reality or myth).  

      Critics of McLaren will doubtless argue at this point that he is another prime example of the sort of person Wolfe is satirising; someone who exploits the experiences and appropriates the cultural cachet of those he liked to call the dispossessed; someone claiming to be nostalgic for mud, whilst rarely getting their own hands dirty in the process of making cash from chaos. For me, however, there's a big difference between Malcolm and someone like Leonard Bernstein.     

 

[8] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 497.

 

        

I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know About Her: She Sherriff (the First Buffalo Gal)

Pip Gillard - aka She Sherriff (1981)

Photo by Janette Beckman / Getty Images

 

 

I. 

 

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Gals - a track which was as seminal for a generation of duck rockers and hip hoppers as Anarchy in the UK had been for the generation of punk rockers who preceded them.  

 

However, I'd like to speak here of someone who anticipates the era of scratchin' and square dancing and can justifiably lay claim to being the first buffalo gal: Pip Gillard, who some readers may vaguely (perhaps fondly) remember as She Sherriff ...

 

 

II. 

 

By the beginning of 1982, Malcolm was bored to death managing Bow Wow Wow: we might say that he didn't want Candy, but was, rather, nostalgic for mud; i.e. interested in down and dirty characters, rather than those who are so fine they can't be beat; hobos and hillbillies, rather than heroes and hearthrobs ...  

 

For McLaren, the term mud implied more than merely low-life experience or primitive culture. It was a glorious synonym for authenticity, something that he has always striven for in his work; the true look of music and the real sound of fashion. 

 

McLaren now located this authenticity in the folk music and folk dance of peoples around the word - particularly the sounds and rhythms that came out of Africa, a continent which he romanticised like many European artists before him, as a place of magical paganism and noble savagery. 

 

He identified something of the same jungle spirit in rock 'n' roll; at least in the very early days, before Elvis joined the US Army. And, more surprisingly perhaps, he was excited by what he discovered in them thar hills of the Appalachian Mountains, where people still danced barefoot to the sound of a fiddle and swigged moonshine straight from the jug.

 

If only, mused McLaren, he could find a new Skeeter Davis capable of singing country style with a pop sensibility ... And so, step forward Pip Gillard, who would be signed to Charisma Records [1] under the name of She Sherriff and release her first (and last) single on the label in 1982: a cover version of the country classic I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know (About Him).           

 

Unfortunately, McLaren's first attempt to produce a more authentic sound by reinventing "the big-selling but middle-aged country-and-western genre for a young audience" [2], was not a huge success. For despite "a great deal of media interest, promo photos by The Face photographer Janette Beckman and a Charisma-funded video, She Sherriff failed to deliver on the promise" [3].

 

The single didn't chart and She Sherriff was swiftly dropped by Charisma. If not exactly run out of town, then she was also relegated to that dark corner of popular music history reserved for those who don't even become one hit wonders [4].    

 

 

III. 

 

I suppose, looking back, the problem was not only a poor choice of song, but the fact that for all the stylishness of her proto-buffalo gal image and the mud applied to her limbs, Pip Gillard just didn't convince or really look the part; she was just too fresh-faced - or too pale-faced, if you like. 

 

And posing her with a rocking horse on the record sleeve - was that your idea Nick? - served only to reinforce the idea that this pretty young thing with a red ribbon in her hair would never be able to wrestle a steer, or ride a bucking bronco.     

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Tony Stratton-Smith's small independent record label, Charisma, was founded in 1969 and became home to Genesis and other prog-rock favourites. In 1981, the managing director, Steve Weltman, newly arrived from RCA, was keen to shake things up and so signed McLaren to make his own album (for which he was given an initial advance of £45,000) and advise on new acts and musical trends in an unofficial capacity.

  

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 503. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Note that Pip Gillard did release another single - 'Why Can't You Love Me?' - under her own name, in 1984 on +1 Records. She has also released a track in Japan, as Pippa Gee, called 'Every Time You Touch Me' (Sony, 1983): click here. The Japanese version of this song - 'Suteki My Boy' - was used in a drink commercial.  

 

Play: She Sherriff, 'I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know About Him', (Charisma Records, 1982): click here. 

Play: Skeeter Davis, performing 'I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know' on the Pet Milk Grand Ole Opry Show in 1961: click here. This song, written by Cecil Null, had been a number 1 country hit for Skeeter and Betty Jack Davis (known as the Davis Sisters) in 1953.

For a related post to this one on Buffalo Gals, click here. 

 

And, finally, for a post in which I discuss another track from McLaren's Duck Rock album - 'Double Dutch' - from the inside perspective of someone who worked in the press office at Charisma Records at the time, click here. 

 

Chase Me - Catch Me - Kill Me - Eat Me!

 

The leopard will never lie down with the antelope. 

Whilst the leopard is leopard, he must fall on the antelope, to devour her. 

This is his being and his peace, in so far as he has any peace. 

And the peace of the antelope is to be devourable.

 

 

I. 

 

Those readers familiar with Luc Besson's sci-fi thriller Lucy (2014), starring Scarlett Johansson as a woman who gains superhuman powers - including massively enhanced cognitive abilities - thanks to a (fictional) nootropic (CPH4), will doubtless recall the terrifying opening scene at the hotel when she delivers a metal briefcase to Mr. Jang (a South Korean crime boss played by Choi Min-sik) containing bags of the designer drug in blue-powdered form.

 

As she waits nervously in the lobby, scenes of a cheetah stalking an antelope flash on the screen, indicating the mortal danger she is in. When she is brought before Jang by his henchmen, she desperately pleads for her life as images of the cheetah having caught its tender young prey, carries it away to be eaten [1]. 

As a visual metaphor, it's hardly subtle and is perhaps something of a cliché, combining elements of the lurid and the banal that remind one of the kind of pornography that appeals to those men who enjoy the thought of commiting acts of savage sexual violence against vulnerable-looking doe-eyed girls, or to those who desire to swallow others, or fantasise about being devoured by a large predator, red in tooth and claw. 

 

 

II. 

 

The scene also reminds me, however, of a memorable passage in D. H. Lawrence's essay 'The Reality of Peace', that I'd like to share with readers:

 

"Look at the doe of the fallow deer as she turns back her eyes in apprehension. What does she ask for, what is her helpless passion? Some unutterable thrill in her waits with unbearable acuteness for the leap of the mottled leopard. Not of the conjunction with the hart is she consummated, but of the exquisite laceration of fear, as the leopard springs upon her loins, and his claws strike in, and he dips his mouth in her. This is the white-hot pitch of her helpless desire. She cannot save herself. Her moment of frenzied fulfilment is the moment when she is torn and scattered beneath the paws of the leopard, like a quenched fire scattered into the darkness. Nothing can alter it. This is the extremity of her desire, this desire for the fearful fury of the brand upon her. She is balanced over at the extreme edge of submission, balanced against the bright beam of the leopard like a shadow against him." [2]  

 

For Lawrence, these two types of animal - predator and prey - exist by virtue of juxtaposition; to negate the being of one would be to negate the being of the other. Similarly, any ideal attempt to reconcile the cat and the rat, the wolf and the lamb, or the leopard and the antelope, "is only to bring about their nullification" [3].

 

That's arguably true, but what's interesting is how Lawrence eroticises his philosophy - and does so in a manner that many commentators also find porno-lurid and clichéd. 

 

Michael Black, for example, notes how, in the above passage, the deer is female and the leopard male and he wonders what this tells us about Lawrence's sexual politics. It is one thing, writes Black, "to contemplate predation as a fact of nature; it is another to elevate it to a mystic principle" [4] which eroticises violent death and being devoured. 

 

He has a point, but I suspect Black fails to appreciate just how perverse Lawrence's writing is. 

 

For despite Lawrence's sexual politics mostly oscillating between the romantic and the reactionary, his work also provides us with an explicit A-Z of paraphilias and fetishistic behaviours, obliging readers to think about subjects including: adultery, anal sex, autogynephilia, cross-dressing, dendrophilia, female orgasm, floraphilia, gang rape, garment fetishism, homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, naked wrestling, objectum-sexuality, podophilia, pornography, psychosexual infantalism, sadomasochism, and zoophilia. [5] 

 

It's neither shocking nor suprising, therefore, that Lawrence should also allow an element of vorarephilia to enter his text ...    

   

 

Notes

 

[1] This scene can be watched on YouTube thanks to Universal Pictures All-Access: click here. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 50. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

      I discussed Lawrence's philosophy of anatgonistic opposition - or what he likes to call polarity - at greater length with reference to 'The Reality of Peace' in an earlier (related) post: click here.

 

[4] Michael Black, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Philosophical Works, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 440. 

      

[5] I'm quoting from my post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'D. H. Lawrence: Priest of Kink' (19 July 2018): click here. 

When the Cat Lies Down With the Rat

And they shall make a covenant of peace ...

 

I. 

 

Last night, I had a horrible dream: my cat was lying in the garden on a bright frosty morning, much like this morning, and from under her body I could see a long, hairless tail poking out. Upon investigation, I discovered that a large rat had snuggled beneath her in order to keep warm. 

 

Although aware of the rodent's presence, my cat - normally a serial rat-killer - remained unconcerned. Indeed, she seemed content to rest in harmony with her fellow creature and fulfil Isiah's messianic prophecy [11:6] of a time to come, when there will be universal peace and love and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb; the leopard lie down with the kid, etc. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, whilst there are many who share this vision, I remain with D. H. Lawrence on this and regard it as an expression of moral nihilism, in as much as it involves the negation not merely of otherness and opposition, but of existence as founded upon these principles of antagonism and one form of life eternally devouring another (for it's death that makes the world go round).  

 

In 'The Reality of Peace', Lawrence writes: 

 

"Shall I expect the lion to lie down with the lamb? Shall I expect such a thing? I might as well hope for the earth to cast no shadow, or for burning fire to give no heat. [...] When the lion lies down with the lamb he is no lion, and the lamb, lying down with him, is no lamb. They are merely a neutralisation, a nothingness. If I mix fire and water, I get quenched ash. And so if I mix the lion and the lamb. They are both quenched into nothingness." [1]   

 

He continues:

 

"The lion will never lie down with the lamb; in all reverence let it be spoken. Whilst the lion is lion, he must fall on the lamb, to devour her. This is his lionhood and his peace, in so far as he has any peace. And the peace of the lamb is to be devourable. 

      Where, then, is there peace? There is no peace of reconciliation. Let that be accepted for ever." [2]   

 

Concluding on a thanatological note: 

 

"It is peace for the lion when when he carries the crushed lamb in his jaws. It is peace for the lamb when she quivers light and irresponsible within the strong, supporting apprehension of the lion. Where is the skipping joyfulness of the lamb when the magnificent, strong responsibility of the lion is removed? The lamb need take no thought; the lion is responsible for death in her world." [3]

 

Of course, some critics have sneeringly suggested that this is not how an articulate lamb might put it [4]. 

 

But then, as Nietzsche points out in the Genealogy [1:13], whilst there is nothing strange about lambs harbouring resentment towards those beasts and large birds of prey that carry them off, that's no reason for us to come over all sheepish and blame the predators for being true to their nature, or to describe that nature in moral terms as evil [5].

  

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', in Refections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 49.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., p. 50. 

[4] See, for example, Michael Black who discusses these passages from 'The Reality of Peace' in D. H. Lawrence: The Early Philosophical Works, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 439-441.         

      Black argues that whilst it is "one thing to contemplate predation as a fact of nature; it is another to elevate it to a mystic principle which turns immolation into a vocation." [440] It is precisely such mystification - which Lawrence often eroticises in a manner that reinforces gender stereotypes - that introduces deeply troubling elements in Lawrence's later work to do with sexual politics and human sacrifice.   

[5] Nietzsche goes on to point out that it is as absurd to expect the powerful not to delight in their strength, as it is for the weak to construe their impotence as a form of freedom and their self-restraint as a moral accomplishment, when they simply lack claws. See On the Genealogy of Morality, first essay, §13. 

 

 

For a related post to this one, click here.

      

Byromania: The Malcolm McLaren Birthday Post (2022)

Neon Lord Byron (2020)

sophiespostcard.com

 

"I am such a strange mélange of good and evil 

that it would be difficult to describe me."

 

 

Despite the fact they shared a birthday [1], had several mad, bad, and dangerous character traits in common, and that punk was, in many respects, a continuation of the English Romantic tradition, there's only a single reference to Lord Byron in Paul Gorman's monumental biography of Malcolm McLaren [2].

 

But whilst it's true that Malcolm spoke more often - and more affectionately - about Oscar Wilde than he did Byron, I'm sure the latter as a sexy, stylish rebel against conventional morality who is often described as the first rock star poet, also figured strongly in McLaren's imagination. 

 

Indeed, thinking of those character traits that they had in common, one might even describe McLaren as a Byronic hero: i.e., a flawed genius whose attributes include great talent and passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for those in authority; a reckless disregard for consequences; and, ultimately, a self-destructive streak founded upon the Romantic belief that it is better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.               

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byron was born on 22 January, 1788. Malcolm McLaren was born on 22 January, 1946. Other famous Aquarians who share this birthdate include Sir Walter Raleigh (1552), Francis Bacon (1561), and John Donne (1573).   

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 50. 

This post is written in memory of Malcolm, but is dedicated to all those who knew and loved him.  

The Covid Nightmare (After D. H. Lawrence)

The Scream of Covid-19 

by Dee Tyndall (after Edvard Munch)

redbubble.com

 

  

I. 

 

He had never known fear. But in England, during the coronavirus pandemic, he experienced an increasing sense of terror; not of catching the disease, but of being bullied by the malevolent spirit which arose amongst the mask-wearing, socially-distanced, lockdown-loving vaccine fanatics. 

 

From 2020 onwards, a form of criminal insanity seemed to possess authorities around the world, including the UK government led by a pathological liar and other bottom-dog members of a Cabinet prepared to terrorise and coerce the general public in the name of health and safety. 

 

The psychological pressure and daily propaganda - spread by a compliant media - was steadily applied in order to break the independent spirit of anyone who wouldn't toe the line and identify with the will of the majority; surrendering their reason and their rights as an individual. 

 

Clap for the NHS and get triple jabbed: this he steadfastly refused to do. His love of freedom (and an essentially contrarian nature) made him abide by his own feelings, come what may. It was not selfishness. Or libertarian sentimentality. It was a question of integrity: would he give in to mass hysteria or not?                

 

To be clear: he belonged to no group or cause and was not an anti-vaxxer. That is to say, he had no moral, political, or medical objection to vaccination. It was the bullying of those who exercised their right to withhold consent and defend bodily autonomy in the face of biopolitical pressure that he disliked and would never acquiesce in. But his feeling was something private and he didn't want to force his views on any other person.  

 

A potentially lethal respiratory virus rapidly spreading around the world is horrible enough. But what made the pandemic so intolerable was that in every country almost everyone lost their heads and any sense of perspective. 

 

The English usually pride themselves on the fact that during a crisis they keep calm and carry on with life as usual: but not this time. This time practically everyone was caught up in the hysteria and swept along, disinclined to think or feel for themselves, frightened to speak up or speak out, and - it has to be admitted - perversely enjoying the experience. 

 

Some people fell ill. Some fell very ill. And some died. But the vast majority, their inner pride gone, just virtue signalled their way through the pandemic by demanding ever tighter restrictions on freedom, boasting of their vaccine status, and finger-wagging at those who showed the least trace of scepticism in the face of what we were being told about the virus. 

 

And now, as we begin to face up to a post-pandemic world and learn to live with Covid, there is a tremendous price to pay because we collectively lost our heads and, worse, lost too our inward, individual integrity. We should not have lost our heads: in a time of crisis, we need to act with greater care and greater courage, but also with a greater sense of calm. And perhaps too, greater kindness.      

 

Of course, superficially, people were kind: not least the nurses and voluntary staff at the vaccination centre where he had queued up in a mask and felt dejected and humiliated when told to stand here, go there, keep his distance, follow the markings on the floor, etc. Why was it nobody else seemed to mind?

 

Having had the jab, he went back home. When the time came for his second shot he would go again, but he would not allow himself to be made a fool of or infantalised; he would not, for example, wear the little badge that they gave him as if he were a six-year-old child which read: I'm a vaccine hero. 'Once,' he said to the Little Greek, 'I'm fully vaccinated, I will never obey another mandate.'

 

 

II.

 

Three weeks later, and he sat in A&E with a blood clot in his lower-right leg; no one wanted to say it was a side-effect of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine - correlation is not causation - but everyone suspected as much. This led to a six-week period in which he had to inject an anticoagulant into his stomach on a daily basis. The clot eventually dissolved and the bruising faded, but the phlebitis in his leg has flared up several times since. 

 

But inflammed veins don't hurt as much as the pain caused by the unspeakable baseness of the press and public calling for mandatory vaccination and the social exclusion of those who refuse to be jabbed or fail to provide proof of such. No one who has seen what is happening in Europe, or Australia, or been threatened with arrest by the police for sitting on a park bench or refusing to reveal the contents of their shopping trolley, can ever believe again in the benevolence of the State. 

 

In 2020-21, the old world ended. And it wasn't coronavirus to blame, or the Chinese Communist Party; it was our own leaders who shirked their duty (in the name of following the science and perhaps secretly fantasising of a Great Reset). 

 

If only enough individuals had kept their heads and their integrity, the pandemic would never have unfolded in the way it did. If only, in the beginning, there had been enough voices raised in opposition to lockdowns in the UK, then we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today. But the British - particularly the Welsh and the Scots - wobbled and lost their minds and the tide of horror accumulated. 

 

And now things will never be the same again ... (Although the snowdrops will soon be out.) 

 

 

Note: this post is written after (and in the manner of) D. H. Lawrence; see Chapter XII of his novel Kangaroo (1923), entitled 'The Nightmare', which details the unpleasant wartime experiences of the protagonist - Richard Lovatt Somers - who was subject to bullying authority, police harassment, and intimate medical inspection (much as Lawrence was himself). 

      As I have not indicated where I paraphrase, where I quote - or, if you prefer, where I borrow, where I steal - from Lawrence's text, I would encourage readers who are interested to go to the novel directly. The Cambridge Edition, ed. Bruce Steele, established from the original sources and first published in 1994, is the one I relied upon when writing this post; see pp. 212-259. 

      Finally, note that this post is not intended to be either a homage to or parody of Lawrence. And if I say things here which you don't agree with, well, don't allow yourself to be offended, or howl for me to be arrested or thrown out of Essex. I've not done anything to hurt you and there's really no need for personal enmity.       

 

 

Richard Lovatt Somers: Notes Towards a Character Study (Part 2)

 

Garry Shead: Flaming Kangaroo (1992) 

From the D. H. Lawrence Series  

etchinghouse.com.au

 

 

I. 

 

So, as we have seen in part one of this study, R. L. Somers is a queer fish, who desires (at times at least) to actually become-fish and leave cloying humanity behind. At other times, however, as we shall discuss here, he pledges his allegiance to dark gods and prides himself on the daimonic aspects of his nature. 

 

It might be argued, therefore, that in as much as he has a politics, the latter rests upon a philosophy of inhuman otherness and an opening up of self to alien forces; not something that is shared with Ben Cooley, who acts in the name of Love and remains human, all too humanistic (even when, physically, he resembles a kangaroo). 

 

Anyway, let's pick up from where we left off in Lawrence's Australian novel: I remind readers that page numbers given below refer to the Cambridge Edition of Kangaroo (1994), ed. Bruce Steele.

 

 

II.

 

Somers is a man who wants to be convinced by Kangaroo, so that he might submit to him. But he isn't convinced, so he can't and won't submit. Not to Ben Cooley, not to anybody. Nor will he allow himself to be carried away: "He had a bitter mistrust of seventh heavens and all heavens in general." [132] Like Larry David, Somers has learnt to curb his enthusiasm and come to the end of transports. 

 

"'I don't quite believe that love is the one and only, exclusive force or mystery of living inspiration. [...] There is something else'" [134], Somers tells an exasperated Kangaroo. And this something else is that which enters us not from above via the spirit, but from behind and below, marking the end of all that we are (or, rather, all that we think we are). 

 

With his devilish blue-eyes sparkling, Somers says: "'What you call my demon is what I identify myself with. It's the best me, and I stick to it.'" [136-37] As a reader of Nietzsche, I know precisely what he means and I sympathise with this position [a]. Many of us have grown tired of being moral-ideal automatons and long to escape our humanity as founded upon the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

 

Whether this means flirting with one's next door neighbour's wife, however, is another matter; not that Somers follows through with his illicit desire for Victoria, despite having "stroked her hot cheek very delicately with the tips of his fingers" [142] and justified the possibility of an adulterous affair in his own mind by giving reference to the gods. 

 

For in his heart of hearts, Somers remained stubbornly puritanical and "his innermost soul was dark and sullen, black with a sort of scorn" [143] even for extramarital shenanigans. Better to collect differently coloured sea-shells on the beach, or to take off one's clothes and run naked in the rain, or to go for a swim in the sea and delight in the fresh cold wetness. 

 

Indeed, better even to chase rainbows than to get mixed up with the world: "The rainbow was always a symbol to [Somers ...] of unbroken faith, between the universe and the innermost" [155]. The problem is, even when feeling relatively peaceful Somers found himself in a "seethe of steady fury" [163] - a kind of general rage aimed at no one and everyone: 

 

"He didn't hate anybody in particular, nor even any class or body of men. He loathed politicians, and the well-bred darling young men of the well-to-do middle classes made his bile stir. [...] But as a rule the particulars were not in evidence [...] and his bile just swirled diabolically for no particular reason at all." [163]

 

At times, Somers feels himself to be a sort of human bomb ready to explode and cause the maximum amount of havoc. Again, one is reminded of Nietzsche, who declared: "I am not a man - I am dynamite!" [b] Is this longing for chaos a resentful expression of anarcho-nihilism? Perhaps. But more likely, it's related to the abuse Somers suffered at the hands of the authorities during the War years whilst in Cornwall (a period he refers to as the Nightmare and which inflicted lasting psychological damage upon him) [c].

 

But, thankfully, Somers manages to refrain from exploding and resist the urge to involve himself in bloody revolution; for he realises that this simply leaves behind "'the same people  after it as before'" [161-62]. His pessimism and his inability to summon up sufficient enthusiasm for any form of militancy or direct action is, of course, his saving grace. When, inevitably, there's a row in town (Chapter XVI), it's not Somers who breaks heads with an iron bar. 

 

Ultimately, Somers simply doesn't care: "How profoundly, darkly he didn't care." [178] What does the modern world of men and politics matter compared to the ancient fern-world, "before conscious responsibility was born" [178] and men too were shadowy like trees, "with numb brains and slow limbs and a great indifference" [179]? 

Later, Somers confesses his indifference: "'I try to kid myself that I care about mankind and its destiny. [...] But at the bottom I'm as hard as a mango nut. [...] I don't really care about anything [...]" [203] For Kangaroo, this - combined with his obsession with the magic of the dark world - makes Somers a traitor to his own human intelligence; a remark that causes Richard to smile and recall Nietzsche once more [d].

 

Thus, no surprises then that Richard Somers leaves Australia shortly after his falling out with Kangaroo - and shortly after the latter dies from a gun shot wound that resulted from a political meeting turning violent (Chapter XVI). 

 

Although Somers visits Kangaroo in hospital, there's no reconciliation and although Cooley pleads with Somers to concede that love is the greatest thing of all, the latter cannot make this concession - even to comfort a dying man. In fact, he tells Cooley: "'I don't want to love anybody. Truly. It simply makes me frantic and murderous to have to feel loving any more.'" [326]      

 

Jack Callcott thinks Somer's was a bit hard on Cooley as the latter lay on his death bed. But Kangaroo surely shouldn't have been surprised, as Somers has already made it perfectly clear that he wants an understanding between them that is deeper than love and allows each to retain their integrity: "'Let's be hard, separate men.'" [209] [e]      

Again, I find this diamond-like Somers who loves nobody and likes nobody, rather amusing (my middle name, as Katxu once said, is Hate). But so too do I like the Somers who walks round the Zoo and feels tenderness for the animals (to whom he feeds extra-strong peppermints). But then, tenderness isn't the same as love; it's deeper, darker and, as Lawence will later conclude, more phallic in origin than the latter. 

 

The Australian bush and the wildlife - the (mostly) unique flora and fauna - are what, ultimately, cause Somers (despite all that we say above) to declare his love for the country: "'I don't love the people. But this place - it goes into my marrow, and makes me feel drunk.'" [347]

But still he leaves: waving his orange silk handkerchief in the air as he sets sail for America; arguably one of the most fascinating characters ever to have found himself upside down at the bottom of the world (to borrow David Allen's phrase) [f]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the section entitled 'The Convalescent' in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which he asserts that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him. I am following Walter Kaufmann's translation in The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin Books, 1976), p. 330.

      It's clear that Richard Somers has read Zarathustra - later in the novel he quotes from the book re the idea of great events (and the need to unlearn our belief in them when they consist only of a lot of noise and smoke). See Kangaroo, p. 161 and see the section entitled 'Of Great Events' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1988), p. 126. 

      One wonders if, in making this startling declaration, Nietzsche forgets what he wrote in The Gay Science: "I do not love people who have to explode like bombs in order to have any effect at all." Perhaps it betrays a certain self-contempt; or perhaps it demonstrates how Nietzsche's position (and temperament) becomes more violent (more desperate) over the years. See The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 218, p. 210.

      Finally, readers might like to note that an actual bomb is thrown at the violent climax of Chapter XVI, just as a bomb explodes at the end of Lawrence's previous novel, Aaron's Rod. See p. 282 of the Cambridge Edition (1988), ed. Mara Kalnins. 

 

[c] See Chapter XII, pp. 212-259. Somers, we are informed, has an "accumulation of black fury and fear" [260] submerged like a horrible pool of lava ready to erupt deep in his unconscious. And when he does remember his time in Cornwall and what he experienced, it leaves him "trembling with shock and bitterness" [260] and a feeling not only of intense humiliation, but desecration.  

 

[d] Somers recalls, with a smile, the title of Nietzsche's third book, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878-80). When Cooley goes on to call him a perverse child, this makes Somers laugh and reply: "'Even perversity has its points'". See Kangaroo pp. 206 and 208. 

      Ultimately, what Somers wants is to get clear of humanity: "That was now all he wanted: to get clear. Not to save humanity or to help humanity or to have anything to do with humanity. [...] Now, all he wanted was [...] to be alone." [265] This, for Richard, is the true starting (and finishing) point: "a man alone with his own soul: and the dark God beyond him" [281].     

[e] Again, this is Somers at his most Nietzschean. See the section entitled 'Of Old and New Law Tables' (29), in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which the diamond instructs the charcoal on the need for creators to become hard. 

 

[f] Upside Down at the Bottom of the World is the title of a drama, written by David Allen, about the Lawrence's in Australia. It was published by Heinemann Educational Australia, in 1981. 

 

 

Surprise musical bonus: click here. 

Richard Lovatt Somers: Notes Towards a Character Study (Part 1)

Detail from 'The Struggle' (1992) 

Garry Shead: D. H. Lawrence Series

etchinghouse.com.au

 

I. 

 

In his Introduction to the Cambridge Edition of Kangaroo, Bruce Steele argues that whilst the novel is "in many respects thinly disguised autobiography", uncritical emphasis on this pervasive element has led to the mistaken assumption that the character Richard Lovatt Somers is identical with Lawrence as narrator, even though "Lawrence as narrator [...] is often sharply distinct from his character Somers and frequently critical of him and his views" [a].  

And that's true - but doesn't go far enough. For I would not only challenge the ridiculous idea that Somers is identical with the narrator, but interrogate also the belief that the narrator can be identified with an Author who resides outside (and above) the text and in whose person is found the very origin of the work and its ultimate truth.       

      

In this post, therefore, I'm concerned only with Richard Somers and not interested in making any attempt to tie Kangaroo as a work of fiction to Lawrence's own memories, foreign travels, political views, or sexual fantasies. As Deleuze says, creative writing that is overly reliant upon autobiography is not only often bad writing, but dead writing; for literature dies from an excess of authorial input just as it does from an overdose of reality.

 

 

II.

 

Richard Somers is a queer fish: a small, foreign-looking, slightly comical figure, with a pale face, dark beard, and an absent air of self-possession that spoke not only of his (in)difference, but innate superiority and sensitivity (as indicated by his Italian suit and brown shoes).

 

His middle name, Lovatt, suggests either something wolfish about his nature, or something rotten; either way, he doesn't like to be cheated by taxi drivers - but then, who does? Nor does he find humorous house names very amusing - but then ...

 

To be fair, Somers could be charming - when he wanted - but mostly he liked to keep himself to himself and not to "speak one single word to any single body" [19] - except Harriett, his wife, "whom he snapped at hard enough" [19]. The thing he hates most of all is "promiscuous mixing in" [36] and informality. 

 

Unfortunately, Somers can't help feeling himself in touch with (and responsive to) others due to the fact he possessed "the power of intuitive communication" [37]. However, despite this, Somers "would never be pals with any man" [38].    

 

Somers was a writer of poems and essays, with an income of £400 a year (i.e., about twice the average wage in 1922). So, whilst not rich, he was able to globe-trot, admiring the local flora whilst despising the natives and forever asking himsef why he had ever bothered to leave England: Somers "wandered disconsolate through the streets of Sydney" [20], longing to be back in London.

 

Still, if the city disappoints, the Australian bush makes a tremendous impression upon him: "Richard L. had never quite got over that glimpse of terror in the Westralian bush" [15]. He was sure a menacing spirit of place had been watching him as he walked amongst the ghostly pale trees. Watching - and waiting to grab him. For as a poet, Somers felt himself "entitled to all kinds of emotions and sensations which an ordinary man would have repudiated" [14].

 

But of course, as the narrator of Kangaroo notes: "It is always a question, whether there is any sense in taking notice of a poet's fine feelings." [15] Or indeed, his prejudices - of which Somers has many; mostly rooted in his snobbishness, such as his dismissal of Australians "with their aggressive familiarity" [21] as barbarians, lacking in class and culture. For Somers, there has to be rule - otherwise there's just a form of irresponsible anarchy and bullying.    

 

"Poor Richard Lovatt wearied himself to death struggling with the problem of himself, and calling it Australia." [28] That's an interesting remark. But what is Somers's problem? I'm not sure - perhaps we'll find out by the end of this character study ... And maybe we'll find out too what lesson it is that Somers thinks the world has got to learn [31] - or why it is he seems so fascinated by the legs of young men in bathing suits on the beach [27]. 

 

But maybe not: maybe Somers will always remain something of an enigma: for it was "difficult to locate any definite Somers, any one individual [...] The man himself seemed lost in the bright aura of his rapid consciousness" [38]. Somers, we might say, is mercurial and light-footed. He's also a reckless chess player; "very careless of his defence" [39], which is odd for someone so guarded in other respects.

 

For a man who, by his own admission, never takes any part in politics, Somers does seem to hold a number of very definite political views; as might be expected of a writer of essays on social and political topics, such as the future of democracy or the fate of capitalism. And his views might best be described as national socialist in character (all that talk of blood and soil), or as a kind of demonic radicalism (all that talk of dark everlasting gods).    

 

Somers also fancies that it's his "own high destiny" [92] to be a leader of men one day and to make some kind of opening in the world. Though, push comes to shove, he can't commit to any cause, party, or movement. Nor even to Benjamin ('Kangaroo') Cooley. Something always stops him; "as if an invisible hand were upon him" [106]. 

 

Thus, whilst Somers might crave living fellowship with others, he does not want affection, love, nor comradeship. For living fellowship, it turns out, is a synonym for the mystery of lordship. That is to say, the thing which the dark races still know:

 

"The mystery of innate, natural, sacred priority [...] which democracy and equality try to deny and obliterate [...] the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority" [107] [b].

 

At other times, however, Somers rejects the human world entirely - and I think I like him best at such moments; when he is filled with cold fury and contempt for mankind and cares only for the dark cold sea, dreaming (in what is perhaps my favourite section of the novel) of becoming-fish: 

 

"To have oneself exultingly ice-cold, not one spark of this wretched warm flesh left, and to have all the terrific, ice energy of a fish. To surge with that cold exultance and passion of a sea thing! [...] No more cloying warmth. No more of this horrible stuffy heat of human beings. To be an isolated swift fish in the big seas, that are bigger than the earth; fierce with cold, cold life, in the watery twilight before sympathy was created to clog us.

      They were his feelings now. Mankind? Ha, he turned his face to the centre of the seas, away from any land. The noise of waters, and dumbness like a fish. The cold, lovely silence, before crying and calling were invented. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, as if it had relapsed away from speech altogether.

      He did not care a straw what [...] anybody said or felt, even himself. He had no feelings, and speech had gone out of him. He wanted to be cold, cold, and alone like a single fish, with no feeling in his heart at all except a certain icy exultance and wild, fish-like rapacity. [...] Who sets a limit to what a man is. Man is also a fierce and fish-cold devil, in his hour, filled with cold fury of desire to get away from the cloy of human life altogether, not into death, but into that icily self-sufficient vigour of a fish." [125]  

 

As Zarathustra might say: Man needs what is most piscean in him for what is best in him ... [c]  

 

 

This series of notes for a character study of R. L. Somers is continued in part two of this post: click here.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Bruce Steele, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. xxiii. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.  

[b] This is, of course, a fantasy of the reactionary imagination and one which I have discussed recently on Torpedo the Ark in terms of natural aristocracy: click here. I also discuss the politics of this passage in chapter 5 of Outside the Gate, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), see pp. 100-126, and will comment further on Somers's politico-theological speculations in part two of this post. 

[c] I'm paraphrasing a famous line written by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - see the section entitled 'The Convalescent'. 

Advance Australia (into Darkness)

The original 1912 drawing for the Australian coat of arms

 

 

Covid mania has sent the entire world crazy in the last two years and many governments have reacted in a senseless and shameful manner. But nowhere is this fascist hysteria in the face of a virus that has killed less than 2,500 of its citizens - the average age of whom is 83 - more astonishing than in Australia ... [a]

 

Astonishing - and depressing - but not surprising to readers familiar with D. H. Lawrence's novel Kangaroo (1923) [b], which offers a brilliant meditation not only on the queer spirit of place Down Under, but the political psychology of the typical Aussie in times of crisis (be it post-War or mid-pandemic).

 

According to Lawrence, whilst the Australian bush is beautiful and endlessly fascinating, so too does it possess something threatening about it [c]. Likewise, whilst Australians seem to be some of the friendliest, most easy-going people on earth - free from much of the formality and uptightness that is said to characterise the British - there's a unique mix of resentment and aggressive familiarity behind their superficial charm.

 

Their fraternal idealism or mateyness is, therefore, something about which one should remain profoundly cautious and in Kangaroo Lawrence "creates and magnifies a sense of subterranean violence ready to burst through the carefree surface of Australian life" [d] that still resonates today as we watch the authorities in God's own country indulge in draconian stupidity with excessive enthusiasm (and popular support).     

 

Who would have thought that a coat of arms bearing a red kangaroo and an emu would one day seem as menacing as one with a lion and a unicorn, or an imperial eagle? 

 

Welcome to 2022 ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Readers who are interested in the official Coronavirus case numbers and statistics for Australia can visit their Department of Health website for daily information: click here.

 

[b] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994). All page references are to this edition of the work that Lawrence wrote (in six weeks) during his hundred day stay in Australia (4 May - 11 August 1922). 

      Interestingly, when Lawrence arrived Down Under: "It was a period when Sydney was again suffering from a bubonic plague scare: a very mild scare, some fifteen cases to a million people, according to the newspapers.* But the town was placarded with notices 'Keep your town clean', and there was a stall in Martin Place where you could write your name down and become a member of a cleaning league, or something to that effect." [48] 

      *The May 3rd edition of the Daily Telegraph, for example, reported twenty-seven cases of plague; seven of which were fatal. 

 

[c] Lawrence tells us that the "vast, uninhabited land" [13] frightened the book's protagonist Richard Somers: 

      "It seemed so hoary and lost, so unapproachable. The sky was pure, crystal pure and blue, of a lovely pale blue colour: the air was wonderful, new and unbreathed: and there were great distances. But the bush, the grey, charred bush. It scared him. As a poet, he felt himself entitled to all kinds of emotions and sensations which an ordinary man would have repudiated. Therefore he let himself feel all sorts of things about the bush. It was so phantom-like, so ghostly, with its tall pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses, partly charred by bush fires: and then the foliage so dark, like grey-green iron. And then it was so deathly still. Even the few birds seemed to be swamped in silence. Waiting, waiting - the bush seemed to be hoarily waiting. And he could not penetrate into its secret. He couldn't get at it. Nobody could get at it. What was it waiting for? 

      And then one night at the time of the full moon he walked alone into the bush. A huge electric moon, huge, and the tree-trunks like naked pale aborigines among the dark-soaked foliage, in the moonlight. And not a sign of life - not a vestige. 

      Yet something. Something big and aware and hidden! He walked on, had walked a mile or so into the bush, and had just come to a clump of tall, nude dead trees, shining almost phosphorescent with the moon, when the terror of the bush overcame him. He had looked so long at the vivid moon, without thinking. And now, there was something among the trees, and his began to stir with terror, on his head. There was a presence. He looked at the weird, white dead trees, and into the hollow distances of the bush. Nothing! Nothing at all. He turned to go home. And then immediately the hair on his scalp stirred and went icy cold with terror. What of? He knew quite well it was nothing. [...]

      But the horrid thing in the bush! He laboured as to what it could be. It must be the spirit of place. Something fully evoked tonight, perhaps provoked, by that unnatural West-Australian moon. Provoked by the moon, the roused spirit of the bush. He felt it was watching, and waiting. Following with certainty, just behind his back." [14]

      I quote this from chapter one at length as a treat for readers unfamiliar with Lawrence's work. Here, he writes in a manner that some might call Lovecraftian. In the final chapter of his novel (XVIII), Lawrence provides another beautiful description of the Australian bush, this time without the sense of horror underneath: see pp. 342 and 353-355.  

 

[d] Bruce Steele, Introduction to Kangaroo, p. xxxii. 

      This becomes clear when, for example, we witness the pleasure that Jack Callcott gets from breaking the heads of his political opponents with an iron bar and boasting of it afterwards to Somers, with "the strangest grin in the world" on his face and "indescribable gloating joy in his tones" [319]. 

 

 

This post is for Novak Djokovic.     

 

  

Invocation of Death

 

Evelyn De Morgan: The Angel of Death (1880)

demorgan.org.uk

 

Sweet, beautiful death, come to our aid. 

Give us a chance to escape this foul prison in which we suffocate. 

Sweet death, assert your power now, for it is time.   

 

 

Death is often personified: sometimes as a deity; sometimes as an angel; sometimes as a robed skeleton, pale horseman, or even as a type of lover who comes with a kiss. But whatever form death is thought to take, it holds out for many not merely the promise of a permanent and irreversible cessation of all biological functions, but the hope of an escape ... 

 

Thus, it's not surprising to discover people invoking death (either for themselves or for others) when life has become a mechanical round that makes it difficult "to know or admit the new creative desires that come upon us" [a], or even get up in the morning without a feeling of extreme weariness: 

 

"We cling tenaciously to the old states, we resist our own fulfilment with a perseverance that would almost stop the sun in its course. But in the end we are overborne." [27]. 

 

That's pretty much how I feel at the moment: overborne (i.e., overcome by emotional pressure and physical exhaustion) and at the point where I'm tempted to invoke death and destruction: "If we cannot cast off the old habitual life, then we bring it down over our heads in a blind frenzy." [27]

 

The hope - which may or may not be justified, may or may not be false - is that:

 

"When we have become very still, when there is an inner silence as complete as death, then, as in the grave, we hear the rare, superfine whispering of the new direction; the intelligence comes. After the pain [...] of our destruction in the old life comes the inward suggestion of fulfilment in the new." [28]

 

Of course, in order to become still in this manner it might be vital that others die first - and not in a poetic-metaphorical manner, but in a prosaic, all-too-literal fashion. It's all well and good giving oneself up to the river of peace that bears us and abiding by the incalculable impulse of creation, but if that river is blocked by those who can no longer fully live, but nevertheless refuse to die and pass into the unknown, then ... 

 

Well, then there's a problem. And although from a conventional moral perspective it seems wrong to wish for the death of others, it is sometimes necessary. Necessary also to acknowledge that "not all life belongs to life" [40], nor does all life progress towards a state of transcendent being; for many old people who live on and on, year after year, there is no possibility of coming to blossom. 

 

They live on the dead body of the past and on the blood of their children, seemingly lacking the strength (the courage, or the desire) for  the impulse of death that would transport them into darkness and absolution. 

 

Their life, says Lawrence, is "a slow lapsing out, a slow inward corruption" [41] and they have their being in dementia and decay. Their mouths may remember how to chew and their bowels may still (with the help of a little lactoluse) pass stools, but they lapse further and further into nullity, dragging those who provide care with them [b].

 

And so one invokes death ...

 

But it's more in desperation than anything else, as I don't actually have much faith in the power of prayer, etc. Indeed, I'm not even sure it does any good in writing posts like this one and thinking of the living dead. For as Lawrence notes: "The thought of them is almost as harmful as their presence." [45] 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press 1988), pp. 25-52. The line quoted from here is on p. 27. Future page references will be given directly in the text.  

[b] This isn't a rare occurrence: there are 1.6 million people in the UK aged 85 and over, many of whom have dementia and require full-time care; something that often falls on to family members. In one of the Pansies, Lawrence writes:

 

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to be old,

we are not going to make way, we are not going to die,

we are going to stay on and on and on and on

and make the young look after us

till they are old.       

 

This sounds terrible. And it is terrible. But, unfortunately, it's also true. Of the 7 million people acting as carers in the UK, 1.3 million are themselves aged 65 or over.

      See 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436. 

 

 

This post is for Heide Hatry with whom I discussed the idea.