Grand Austrian Perverts 2: Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

Photo by Anton Josef Trčka (1914)

 

Ich bestreite nicht, Bilder erotischer Natur gemacht zu haben. 

Aber sie sind immer Kunstwerke und den Künstler einzuschränken ist ein Verbrechen.[1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst I have previously expressed my dislike of Egon Schiele's treatment of his devoted muse and lover Wally Neuzil - click here - it would be amiss to write a series of posts on the grand perverts [2] of Austria and not include this brilliant young artist. 

For he may have been a bit of a shit and his concern with marrying advantageously so he could climb the social ladder may make me despise him, but there's no denying that this protégé of Gustav Klimt - another grand pervert in his own right [3] - was a hugely talented figurative painter, whose work is noted (and notorious) for its twisted body shapes and explicit sexual nature.

 

 

II.

 

Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele was born in Tulln, Lower Austria, in 1890. 

 

As a child, he was fascinated by trains and would obsessively spend his time drawing them. I imagine that this was due more to the fact that his father was in charge of the local railway station, rather than an immature form of siderodromophila, but, who knows, maybe these early sketches did have a fetishistic or erotic component to them, which might help explain why his father one day became so enraged that he destroyed them. 

 

It might also explain why even his schoolfriends found him queer - that and the fact that this shy, reserved young man also had an incestuous desire for his younger sister, Gerti; something else that met with paternal disapproval [4]. 

 

By the time he turned sixteen, it was obvious that Egon had a tremendous talent for drawing and so he was enrolled first at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna (where Klimt had once studied) and then at the more traditional Academy of Fine Arts (also in Vienna). 

 

Although he stayed at the latter institution for three years, Schiele despised the ultra-conservative style of painting being taught [5] and so, in 1907, he decided to contact Klimt, who was known to mentor talented young artists. Klimt was so impressed by Schiele, that he not only helped find models and potential clients, but bought some of the young artist's drawings himself.  

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, Schiele's earliest work shows the strong influence of Klimt, although there are also similarities with his slightly older contemporary - and rival - Oskar Kokoschka. However, he soon developed his own distinctive style and, free from the conventions that had been imposed upon him at the Academy, he began to explore (and distort) the human form, particularly in its sexual aspect. 

 

This included some shockingly honest nude self-portraits, including one from 1910 in which  he is seen grimacing, and another, from 1911, in which he is masturbating. Other nude portraits were equally provocative; not least those which featured very young (and very thin) models in sexualised poses, such as Girl with Black Hair (1910), or Nude with Red Garters (1911): see figures 1 and 2 below.

 

Many critics thought the works grotesque and pornographic and soon the authorities would be coming for Schiele, who, perhaps sensing that trouble was brewing, decided to leave Vienna and start afresh elsewhere ...

 

 

III.

 

Schiele and his mistress Wally first moved to the small town of Český Krumlov (German: Krumau), in southern Bohemia. Unfortunately, they quickly upset the locals with their lifestyle and the fact that Schiele tried to employ their young daughters as models. 

 

Obliged to move on, they travelled to Neulengbach, about 25 miles west of Vienna. However, as in Krumau, Schiele's studio became a meeting place for delinquent adolescents and unsavoury artist-types and soon the town's residents were up in arms, the Bürgermeister agreeing that something had to be done. 

 

And so, in April 1912, Schiele's studio was raided by the police who seized more than a hundred works they considered degenerate [6] and arrested him on a charge of seducing a girl below the age of consent (which was then - as now - fourteen in Austria) [7]. Schiele was imprisoned for three weeks while awaiting his trial, during which time he produced a series of twelve paintings depicting life behind bars. 

 

When his case was finally heard, the charge of seduction was dropped. But he was found guilty of exhibiting obscene drawings in a place accessible to children and the judge seemed to take a strange delight in burning one of these offending works over a candle flame in the courtroom itself.   

 

Deciding he really needed to settle down - and tone down the pervy-paedo content of his work - Schiele married in 1915 into a solidly middle-class family, breaking Wally's heart in the process. Despite being conscripted during the War, he continued to work and to exhibit. By 1917, he was back in Vienna and able to focus more fully on his artistic career. 

 

This was, in fact, his most productive period and at the Secession's 1918 exhibition, Schiele had fifty works on display in the main hall. He also designed a poster for the event; a version of the Last Supper, with himself in the role of Christ. The show was a huge success and not only did he receive many new portrait commissions, but prices for his older works dramatically increased.

 

Unfortunately, in the autumn of that same year, the Spanish flu [8] arrived in Vienna: it first killed his wife (who was six months pregnant at the time) and, three days later, on Halloween, it claimed Schiele's life too. Allegedly, his last words were: Der Krieg ist aus, und ich muss gehen ... 

 

Which is a nice line with which to close either a life or a post. 

 

 

Fig. 1: Schwarzhaariger Mädchenakt (1910)

Fig. 2: Akt mit roten Strumpfbändern  (1911)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who don't read German and can't be bothered to have it translated, the lines in English read:  'I do not deny that I have made pictures of an erotic nature. But they are always works of art and to restrict the artist is a crime.'

 

[2] I am borrowing this phrase from D. H. Lawrence, who, in a letter to Aldous Huxley, once described St. Francis, Michelangelo, Goethe, Kant, Rousseau, Byron, Baudelaire, Wilde and Marcel Proust as grand perverts. Click here for my post on this subject.

 

[3] Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), was an Austrian symbolist and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His primary subject was the female body and his works are marked by what is often rather coyly phrased as a frank eroticism. As he began to develop a more pervy style, his work was increasingly the subject of controversy; this culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic.

 

[4] When Egon was sixteen he took his twelve-year-old sister Gerti - by train - to Trieste and spent the night in a hotel room with her. By this time his father had died, of syphilis, and he was technically in the care of his maternal uncle (another railway official).   

 

[5] Schiele's main teacher at the Academy was the German painter Christian Griepenkerl, who specilised in allegorical works based on themes drawn from classical mythology. As well as frustrating Schiele, Griepenkerl was also the man who twice rejected Adolf Hitler's application to study at the Academy in 1907-08. 

 

[6] As Cody Delistraty reminds us in his essay 'Rethinking Schiele' in The Paris Review (3 Dec 2018):

      

"Working at precisely the time that fin-de-siècle decadence and excess was giving way to prewar conservatism, Schiele found that degeneracy would become a key term in his damnation. Degeneracy, of course, was also the term that the Nazis would use to describe so much of modern art, from works by Vincent van Gogh to Paul Klee to Edvard Munch." 

 

This interesting essay, which discusses Schiele's art in relation to questions of pornography and sexual exploitation, can be read online by clicking here. 

[7] Thirteen-year-old Tatjana Georgette Anna von Mossig. Frl. Mossig, from Neulengbach, was the daughter of an esteemed naval officer. I am grateful once more to Cody Delistraty for this information. 

 

[8] Unlike the coronavirus pandemic which caused global hysteria, the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-20) was exceptionally deadly and no one really knows how many people it killed, although estimates vary from 17 million to 50 million (and possibly as high as 100 million). Unusually, whereas the flu usually kills the very young and very old, this strain also had a high mortality rate amongst young adults, such as 28-year-old Schiele. 

 

 

To read the first post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Arthur Schnitzler - click here.   

 

To read the third post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Freud - click here. 

 

 

Grand Austrian Perverts 1: Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) 

Photo by Ferdinand Schmutzer (c. 1912)

 

Ich schreibe über Liebe und Tod. Welche anderen Fächer gibt es?

 

 

I. 

 

If the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler is known at all today in the English-speaking world, it's as the author of the 1926 work Traumnovelle, which was adapted for the screen by Stanley Kubrick as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman [1].  

 

But he deserves, as a grand pervert [2] and pessimist, to be better remembered in my view ...

 

 

II.   

 

Schnitzler was born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1862. His father was a famous laryngologist - not something many people can say - originally from Hungary. And his mother was the daughter of a prominent Viennese doctor. 

 

So, no surprises then, that in 1879 young Arthur Schnitzler should begin studying medicine, qualifying as a doctor in 1885. Although he took up a job in Vienna's General Hospital, his heart wasn't in it: he wanted, rather, to become a writer and would eventually abandon the medical profession and opt for the life of a man of letters. 

 

In 1903, he married Olga Gussmann, an aspiring young actress and singer half his age, who also came from a Jewish middle-class background. The marriage lasted for eighteen years - and the couple had two children - before separating in 1921, ten years before Schnitzler's death.      

 

 

III.

 

As a member of the Austrian avant-garde, Schnitzler happily played with literary and social convention [3] and his works were regarded as controversial; both for their sexually explicit descriptions - much appreciated by Freud - and for their rebuttal of antisemitism.

 

Following the first public performance, in 1920, of his play Reigen (1909) [4], Schnitzler was not only condemned as a pornographer, but attacked in the vilest manner possible for his Jewishness. When asked by an interviewer why all his works betrayed the same perverse obsessions, he replied: 'I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, Hitler was not a fan; describing Schnitzler's work as Jüdischer Dreck and his books were first banned by the Nazis, then burned by the Nazis. 

 

Fortunately, Schnitzler's papers - including manuscripts, letters, and an almost 8,000 page diary in which he recorded full details of his many sexual encounters and experiences - were saved from the flames and eventually ended up in Cambridge University Library.       

IV.

In closing, I'd like to mention Schniztler's philosophical pessimism. 

 

As Byung-Chul Han reminds us, in one famous aphorism, Schnitzler "proposes a relationship between bacilli and the human race" [5] and presents a vision "of an ontological or even a cosmic necessity for the general demise of life" [6]. 

 

It is a vision in which "the secret fate of every individual is to destroy the other" [7], not because of any evil intention to cause harm, but simply because: "Existence as such is already violence." [8]  

 

Notes

 

[1] Kubrick's version of Schnitzler's psycho-sexual fantasy makes significant changes to the original story and its setting; for example, the film takes place in New York in the late 1990s, not in Vienna in the early 1900s. Kubrick also removed all references to the Jewishness of the characters.      

[2] I am borrowing this phrase from D. H. Lawrence, who, in a letter to Aldous Huxley, once described St. Francis, Michelangelo, Goethe, Kant, Rousseau, Byron, Baudelaire, Wilde and Marcel Proust as grand perverts. Click here for my post on this subject.

[3] Schnitzler was a member of Jung-Wien, a society of fin de siècle writers who experimented with the more radical aspects of Modernism, challenging 19th-century realism and moralism, and promoting a politics of desire. Schnitzler was the first writer of German fiction to use stream of consciousness as a narrative mode. He was also a great practitioner of what is now known as microfiction.    

 

[4] Reigen - better known by its French title, La Ronde - was written by Schnitzler in 1897 and privately printed in 1900. It provocatively examines issues to do with class and sexual morality.  

 

[5]  Byung Chul-Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 97. 

      The aphorism in question can be found in Arthur Schnitzler, Aphorismen und Betrachtungen, (S. Fischer Verlag, 1967), pp. 177-78. It is quoted in full (and translated into English) in Han's text, p. 97.

 

[6-8] Ibid., Note 41, p. 146.

 

 

To read the second post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Egon Schiele - click here.  

 

To read the third post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Freud - click here.

No Justice, No Peace

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I.

 

No justice, no peace is a political slogan one often hears chanted during protests; particularly protests involving the black community. Its precise meaning is said to be contested, which is rather surprising as I would've thought its message is perfectly clear: as long as there is social injustice, there will always be political discord and violence [1].

 

What's interesting is how it ties ideas of justice and peace - or injustice and violence - inextricably together. And that's what I wish to examine here ...  

 

 

II. 

 

According to Byung-Chul Han, the fact that working-class children have restricted educational and employment opportunities, is an injustice, but it isn't a form of violence: "If violence is used as shorthand for general social negativity, the contours of the idea become hazy." [2] 

 

In other words, the conception of violence must be kept clear and distinct from other ideas and, indeed, not conflated or confused with the operation of power. For even structural forms of oppression in which power is embedded and codified within a system - be it a social, political, or legal system - "is not violence in the strict sense of the word" [3]. 

 

Rather, it is a rulership technique which allows those in control to "rule discreetly and much more efficiently than ruling by violence" [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Byung-Chul Han is not the only theorist to hold such a view; the Italian philosopher Vittorio Bufacchi, whose work is primarily concerned with questions of social injustice and political violence, also suggests that there is a need to rethink the relationship between these things. 

 

Whilst conceding that it is tempting to describe acts of injustice as acts of violence - if only to emphasise their brutality and immorality - he nevertheless argues that, ultimately, there is nothing to be gained by a polemical attempt to either replace one term for the other, or see them as synonymous: "Violence being a more extreme phenomenon than injustice [...]" [5]        

 

The thing is, however, as a working-class child, I feel myself entitled to speak of violence. And whilst I might not jump in front of racehorses or wear a BLM t-shirt, I'm also sympathetic to women who experience systemic sexism, or persons of colour who experience institutional racism, as forms of violence. 

 

For even if such violence is mostly symbolic and disguised or invisible, that doesn't make it any less real. And for academics to insist that despite the often intimate relationship between power and violence "there is a structural difference between them" [6], feels like an anaemic form of sophistry.          

 

Notes

 

[1] Obviously, I am interpreting the slogan as a conditional statement, implying that civil peace is impossible without social justice and which not only sees violence as a consequence of injustice, but arguably warns of (or threatens) such. Others, by contrast, see it as a conjunctive statement to be interpreted as saying that neither peace or justice can exist without the other. 

      Interestingly, just as its meaning is somewhat ambiguous, so is the origin of the slogan somewhat obscure, some researchers tracing it all the way back to a note written by the African-American author and activist Frederick Douglass in 1859.    

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 77.

 

[3] Ibid., p. 78. 

 

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Vittorio Bufacchi, Violence and Social Justice, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 2. 

      Later, Bufacchi admits that whilst the terms violence and injustice are not interchangeable, nevertheless the relationship between them is convoluted and they interact on several different levels. Thus it would be wrong to think of political violence and social justice as a mutually exclusive dichotomy, even if the former has an instrumental value and the latter an intrinsic value (i.e., violence is a means to an end, unlike social justice which is an end in itself). See his Introduction to the above text. 

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, p. 79.   

My Name is Victor Frankenstein

Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein in  

The Curse of Frankenstein, dir. Terence Fisher, 

(Hammer Films, 1957) [1]

 

 

Although I have never read Mary Shelley's famous novel [2], I am of course familiar with the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation [3] and, indeed, have always had an affinity for this noble and unorthodox young scientist - part thanatologist, part alchemist [4] - obsessed with generating new life from dead material.

 

For far from being the prototypical mad scientific genius, as portrayed in numerous cinematic adaptations of the novel, Frankenstein is actually a tragic figure, driven by a beautiful obsession.

 

And if, when things don't quite turn out as planned and he inadvertently endangers his own life and those of his family and friends, he comes to bitterly regret his unnatural experiments, nevertheless one has to admire him for challenging the judgement of God in the manner of a modern Prometheus.

 

But the primary reason I identify with Frankenstein - apart from his intelligence, curiosity about the world, and refusal to be bound by laws and conventions, is because I essentially use his technique as a writer. 

 

That is to say, I cut up dead bodies of text and stitch stolen ideas together in a diabolical manner. My creativity lies - if anywhere - in then being able to provide the electric spark or lightning flash of inspiration which makes the assembled piece of intertextual fiction-theory breathe with new life [5].

 

This might not make me an original [6] talent - any more than Frankenstein's work made him a god - but it does produce some interesting results, does require a certain degree of skill and hard work, and does make me, in a sense, both an artist and alchemist. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Readers might be interested to know that Frankenstein's first appearance on screen was in a silent short film released in 1910, dir. J. Searle Dawley, and starring Augustus Phillips as the good doctor and Charles Ogle as the Monster. 

      This was followed in 1931 by the famous Universal version of the tale, dir. James Whale, starring Colin Clive in the role of Frankenstein, opposite Boris Karloff as the Monster. Both actors reprised their roles in the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (also dir. by James Whale).

      As much as I love Clive's portrayal, I have a particular soft spot for Peter Cushing's performance in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), opposite Christopher Lee as the Creature, which is why I've used his image here. Cushing went on to star as Frankenstein in five more films for Hammer, subtly revealing different aspects of the character in each.

 

[2] I'm referring of course to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), written by Mary Shelley (whilst only eighteen years of age). 

 

[3] For those who aren't familiar with Shelley's figure of Victor Frankenstein, here's a brief character description and story outline:

 

According to the 1831 edition, Victor was born in Naples, but he describes his distinguished ancestry as Genevese.

      As a youth, he was intrigued by the works of famous alchemists such as Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus and longed to discover the so-called philosopher's stone; a mythical substance that could transmute base metals, such as lead, into gold and which was also an elixir of life, promising physical rejuvenation and immortality. 

      Later, however, Victor abandons alchemy for mathematics, which, he thinks, provides a more secure foundation upon which to base an understanding of the world. However, whilst at University in Bavaria, Frankenstein rediscovers his love for chemistry - this time in its modern form - and he makes a number of significant scientific discoveries; including discoveries about the bio-chemical nature of life, which enable him to animate non-living material. This research culminates in his creation of a being resembling man, but whom he comes to regard as a mixture of creature and demon.

     Rejecting the responsibility to care for his creation, the monster decides to seek revenge upon his maker; he murders Frankenstein's youngest brother, his best friend, and strangles Victor's bride, Elizabeth, on their wedding night. 

      Feeling that he has nothing left to live for, Frankenstein vows to destroy the creature and pursues the latter all the way to the North Pole, where he, Victor, eventully dies. Somewhat surprisingly, the monster is so overcome with sorrow and guilt, that he decides to commit suicide, before then disappearing into the frozen Arctic night.    

 

[4] One is tempted to also think of Victor Frankenstein as a Romatic poet, particularly as Mary's lover at the time of writing - and soon to be husband - Percy Shelley, inspired the character; for not only did the latter sometimes use the pen name of Victor, but, whilst a student at Eton, Shelley had conducted chemical experiments involving electricity. His rooms at Oxford were also filled with strange scientific equipment.  

 

 [5] It's been pointed out to me that my understanding of Frankenstein's monster as pieced together from body parts taken from numerous stolen corpses and reanimated by the use of electricity, owes more to the movies than Shelley's novel. In the latter, apparently, Frankenstein discovers the secret principle of life and it's this that allows him to painstakingly develop a method to vitalise inanimate matter, though the actual process is left rather vague. Neverthless, Frankenstein does assemble body parts, so I think my comparison stands and there's no need to split hairs, Maria.        

 

[6] Along with authenticity, originality is one of the concepts I despise the most: I don't care if my posts on Torpedo the Ark lack originality. And besides, as the Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith once wrote in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), we can "pardon the want of originality, in consideration of the exquisite talent with which the borrowed materials are wrought up into the new form". 

      Or, as Roland Barthes would argue, the post-as-text is not expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every new post is therefore, in some sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

      To put that another way, if, as I do, you accept the idea of intertextualité, then questions of authorship and originality go out of the window and Síomón Solomon is right to claim in his brilliant study, Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2020), that every piece of writing is already a translation at some level and the author, whilst masquerading as a unified subject, is actually a multiple assemblage - like Frankenstein's monster - who speaks with many tongues (some of which are forked).

 

 

Nephophilia (A Reply to Simon Solomon)

Dark Clouds (2013) photo by Audrey Skoglund

fineartamerica.com

  

You say it's dark. And, in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun.

                                                                                - Nietzsche

 

 

I. 

 

As Al Murray's Pub Landlord never tires of informing audiences, the British are a sensible, down-to-earth people. They're never going to put a man on the moon, or take the musings of philosophers - particularly in the Continental tradition of France and Germany - seriously. No, of course not: they're a sensible, down-to-earth people. 

 

So I'm never particularly surprised when an Englishman tells me that my thinking is fanciful, impractical, or unrealistic. 

 

But when an Irishman, who identifies as a pataphysical poet and playwright with an interest in all things paranormal and supernatural - including Jungian archetypes - describes my ideas as so preposterous that I might as well be living in the clouds, then I am surprised (to say the least) [1]. 

 

Well, with storm clouds gathering over Eastern Europe, maybe this is a good time to consider what it might mean to inhabit the troposphere ...     

 

 

II.

 

Simon Solomon isn't, of course, the first poet and playwright to ridicule philosophers for their way of thinking. We might recall, for example, the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes, the so-called πατέρας της κωμωδίας, whose satrirical play The Clouds (423 BC) contributed to the death of Socrates two decades later [2].

 

And do I resent being portrayed as a graduate of The Thinkery? Not at all. 

 

In fact, I rather like the idea of my thoughts originating among the clouds; not so much those white, fluffy, happy-looking ones - cumulus clouds, as they are known - but the dark, heavy, menacing storm clouds (cumulonimbus) which roll into view "from out of the eastern heavens" [3], bringing thunder and lightning our way and blotting out the sun. 

 

For whilst idealists with their sunny disposition speak in favour of blue-sky thinking and are confident and hopeful about the future, insisting that every cloud has a silver lining, etc., I subscribe to a more pessimistic (some might even say nihilistic) philosophy. 

 

And if this clouds my judgement, then so be it. At least my clouds "come from great distances, arriving from the deeps of the sky" [4].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the comment made by Simon Solomon at the end of a recent post entitled 'Is Anything Really Worth Fighting For?' (4 Mar 2022): click here.

 

[2] Plato considered The Clouds a contributing factor in Socrates's trial and execution in 399 BC and he mentions the play in his defence of the latter, known as the Apology, which was written shortly afterwards. 

      Aristophanes portrays Socrates as a petty thief, a fraud, and a sophist with an interest in atmospheric phenomena (or what would come to be known as meterology - a Greek term meaning the study of things high up in the sky). Whilst some critics think that Aristophanes's caricature of Socrates is just a bit of fun, others regard it as evidence of the long rivalry between poetic and philosophical modes of thinking.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Clouds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 56. 

 

[4] Ibid., p. 60. 

 

 

Is Anything Really Worth Fighting For?

"I know that for me, the war is wrong. 

I know that, if the [Russians] wanted my little house, 

I would rather give it them than fight for it: 

because my little house is not important enough to me." [1]

 

I. 

 

I said in a recent post with reference to the current situation in Ukraine, that it might have been a wiser diplomatic move on Zelenskyy's part to have attempted to appease Putin - making whatever concessions were needed in order to avoid war - rather than have flirted with the West and indicated his desire to not only join the EU, but NATO.  

Still, it's a bit late for such a policy now that Russia has invaded and major Ukranian cities, including the captal, are being bombarded even as I write. And I'm aware also that appeasement is a dirty word in the political lexicon these days - not least here in the UK, following our experiences in the 1930s with Hitler (give him an inch ...)

 

However, there's really no need for the Ukranians to martyr themselves and I would advise that they capitulate and seek terms with Russia as soon as possible. For there's no shame in surrendering to a massively superior force and, again as I said in the post prior to this one, discretion is the greater part of valour.

 

I don't think this makes me a coward; for it often takes much greater courage to live and refuse to die. 

 

And neither does it make me a pacifist in the conventional sense: I don't have a moral objection to war and certainly don't subscribe to an ideal of peace, love, and the brotherhood of man. I am simply of the view that, in this case, non-violent resistance and civil disobedience makes better strategic sense than armed conflict and self-sacrifice.  

 

 

II. 

 

My thinking in this matter has not, then, been shaped by the likes of white worms such as Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi. 

 

Rather, it's been influenced by D. H. Lawrence, who, whilst writing in favour of combat in the old sense - "fierce, unrelenting, honorable contest" [2] - abhors the thought of war in the modern machine age; "a ghastly and blasphemous translation of ideas into engines, and men into cannon fodder" [3]. 

It's a beautiful thing, says Lawrence, for a man to die "in a flame of passionate conflict [...] for death is to him a passional consummation" [4] and his soul can rest in peace. But to be blown to smithereens while you are eating a kanapki is something obscene and monstrous. 

 

Thus, the Ukranians should refuse to die in such a manner and refuse to fight an abstract invisible enemy whom they will never meet face-to-face on the battlefield. If the Russians are that desperate to occupy territories in the East of Ukraine, then let them ...   

 

Ultimately, it might be the case that the only thing really worth fighting for, tooth and nail, is not your spouse, your children, your country, your fellow citizens, your money, your property, or even your life, but that bit of inward peace, that allows you to reflect with a certain insouciance ... [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell (9 July 1916), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp.625-628. Lines quoted are on p. 626. 

      I have slightly modified what Lawrence writes, replacing the word 'Germans' with 'Russians'. In this crucial statement of Lawrence's views on what is and is not worth fighting for, he continues:

 

"If another man must fight for his house, the more's the pity. But it is his affair. To fight for possessions, goods, is what my soul will not do. Therefore it will not fight for the neighbour who fights for his own goods.

      All this war, this talk of nationality, to me is false. I feel no nationality, not fundamentally. I feel no passion for my own land, nor my own house, nor my own furniture, nor my own money. Therefore I won't pretend any. Neither will I take part in the scrimmage, to help my neighbour. It is his affair to go in or stay out, as he wishes." [626]

 

      See note 5 below for a reference to a later poem in which Lawrence returns to this theme. 

      And cf. with what Birkin says in chapter two of Women in Love when asked whether he would fight for his hat should someone wish to steal it off his head; "'it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man'". See the Cambridge edition (1987), ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, p. 29.         

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 158-59. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 159.

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] I am paraphrasing here from Lawrence's verse 'What would you fight for?' in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 431.

Reflections on the War in Ukraine and the Disquieting Problem of Actor-Politicians

Volodymyr Zelenskyy (SA/2022)

Based on his official presidential portrait (2019)

 

The problem of the actor-politician has long concerned me -

their constant need to play a role, to assume a mask, to post on social media ... [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a classic manifestation of macrophysical violence which has developed in the tension between two states that share a border, i.e., something that divides people into those within (friends and fellow citizens) and those without (foreign enemies).   

 

Such violence, which allows neither for mediation nor conciliation, "exposes the interior to an exterior that defies the interior structure of order and meaning" [2] in an often explosive and deadly manner - as we see today in various Ukranian cities - robbing victims of their lives whilst denying those who survive any room to manoeuver (ultimately, they can only flee). 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, there's no shame in fleeing; discretion being the greater part of valour and he who turns and runs away, lives to fight another day, etc. 

 

The Ukranians could simply have allowed the Russians to enter their land and introduce a different system of order and meaning, replacing one form of government, one way of life, by another. In other words, they could have accepted regime change with a certain stoic indifference. 

 

And there's an argument to be made that non-violent resistance and civil disobedience to Russian rule might have been - strategically and pragmatically - the wiser option. After all, 70-year-old Putin won't be in charge at the Kremlin forever (his resorting to military violence is in fact a sign of his declining power). 

 

Thus, one can't help wondering whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to encourage his people to take up arms in a war that cannot be won and at an enormous cost in terms of lives and infrastructure, might have been mistaken. 

 

Indeed, I'm tempted to also ask whether Zelenskyy's defiant stand against the Red Army might be viewed as a vainglorious gesture on the part of a performer who loves being in the media spotlight and commanding the world stage, rather than as an act of heroism. 

 

Behind every comic actor, they say, is a great tragedian dying to get out. But WWIII seems an exorbitant price to pay for the chance to see Zelenskyy in his greatest role and I really don't know if we should give him ammunition or an Academy Award.           

 

 

Note: 

 

[1] Readers familiar with Nietzsche will know that I'm paraphrasing here from V. 361 of The Gay Science, a section entitled Vom Probleme des Schauspielers. As Nietzsche says, a good actor can easily pass themselves off as a good politician; and a good politician is free at any time to become a good actor. 

      Interestingly, it might be noted that Zelenskyy is also Jewish and Nietzsche claims that the Jews are the people who best possess the art of adaptability, which is why - following this slightly dubious line of argument - so many great actors are Jewish.  

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 64.

 

From Roman Amphitheatre to Nazi Death Camp (A Note on the Topology of Violence)

Postcards from Hell ...[1]

 

 

Oh, those Greeks! They regarded violence as an indispensable necessity [ἀνάγκη]: "tolerated like fate or a law of nature" [2] and cheerfully sanctioned acts of physical aggression as a legitimate means of conflict resolution.

 

I say cheerfully, because affectively discharging destructive energies is a good way of preventing neurotic conditions like depression and anxiety (even if it does have tragic consequences). As Byung-Chul Han notes: "External violence unburdens the psyche because it externalizes suffering." [3] 

 

The Greeks delighted in acts of appalling cruelty - including rape, torture, and arson - but they didn't internally agonise over them afterwards; indeed, their poets celebrated these acts and "Greek mythology is drenched in blood and strewn with dismembered bodies" [4].             

 

Of course, the Romans were just as cruel - if not worse - with giant public displays of staged violence designed to demonstrate the might and magnificence of Rome, free from all bad conscience. As Han writes, in the ancient world, violence was not only ubiquitous, it was "a significant component of social practice and communication" [5]. Power was spectacular, sensational, and bloody.    

 

But in the modern world, "brute violence was delegitimized [...] It has lost virtually every show-place" [6]. Auschwitz, with its gas chambers, is a million miles away from the Colosseum; unlike the latter, the former is located at the edge of town and what goes on there is kept hidden from the public.

 

Power continues to express itself, but does so without any sense of pride or glory: "It does not expressly draw attention to itself. It lacks all language and symbolism. It heralds nothing. It takes place as a mute annihilation." [7] 

 

This isn't to say being torn apart by wild animals in the Colosseum in front of a large crowd is preferable to being murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. 

 

But it is fundamentally different and it illustrates how violence itself has undergone a radical transformation, but without ever disappearing: "Violence is simply protean. It varies its outward form according to the social constellation at hand." [8]   

   

 

Notes 

 

[1] As these two picture-postcard images indicate, dark tourism is today a thriving industry. Whilst there are some who genuinely wish to get a better understanding of how violent power manifested itself in other times, places, and cultures, one can't help suspecting that, for most visitors, a day trip to Auschwitz, for example, is what Johnny Rotten would describe as a cheap holiday in other people's misery.        

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 3. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid.

      Han is surely recalling Nietzsche here, who famously describes how noble peoples - be they Greek, Roman, Arabian, Germanic, or Japanese - remain at heart magnificent blond beasts, avidly prowling round for spoil and victory and able to commit terrible deeds in a spirit of innocence and gay bravado. See On the Genealogy of Morality, Essay 1, §11. 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, p. 4.

[6] Ibid., p. 5. 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. vii. 

 

War - What is it Good For?

 

Russian tank entering eastern Ukraine (24-02-22)

Photo by Nanna Heitmann / Magnum Photos

 

 

Well, if nothing else it reminds us that violence is one of those things which, as Byung-Chul Han says, never disappears; not even in its negative, fully visible and all too real form, which, as the Ukranians are now discovering, is "explosive, massive, and martial" [1]. 

 

Those who (naively) believed that the age of military conflict was over have been given a brutal wake up call by Vladimir Putin and the Russian Armed Forces. 

 

The invasion of Ukraine may only prove to be a temporary set back to the process of globalisation and the utopian dream of a world without borders, etc., but, on the other hand, maybe this would be a good time to reconsider violence in all its externalised macrophysical manifestations ...

 

 

Notes 

 

I know that many readers will think of the No. 1 single by Edwin Starr (Motown, 1970) when they read the title of this post, but what they might not know - unless they happened to work at Pendant Publishing back in the mid-1990s - is that this was originally the title of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1869) and it's this little known fact that I was recalling here. 

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (The MIT Press, 2018), p. vii.

 

 

Notes on an Essay by Stéphane Sitayeb: 'Sexualized Objects in D. H. Lawrence’s Short Fiction: Eros and Thanatos'

Fragment of stained glass (19th century)

7.2 x 3.2 cm (whole object) 

Royal Collection Trust

 

 

I. 

 

Stéphane Sitayeb's essay on sexualised objects in D. H. Lawrence's short fiction [1] is a fascinating read if, like me, you are interested in such things. 

 

However, I'm not sure I share his insistence on giving material items an all-too-human symbolic interpretation. Sometimes, a white stocking is a white stocking and that's precisely wherein its allure resides for the fetishist and object-oriented philosopher, if not, perhaps, for the literary scholar keen to open a "new figurative level of reading".  

 

And his claim that Lawrence resolved to "awaken his readers' spirituality by inducing a shock therapy paradoxically based on physicality, with explicit references to sexualized items and licentious tendencies", is not one I agree with either. In fact, I don't think Lawrence gave a fig for his readers' spirituality. 

 

And, again, just because an object stands upright, that doesn't always mean it has phallic significance; even Freud recognised that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and doesn't represent anything, or always express unconscious human desire. Thus, when Sitayeb says that "Lacanian readings of Lawrence have fathomed the hidden meaning of phallic objects in his fiction", I want to beat him about the head with a large dildo [2].

     

 

II. 

 

Moving on, we discover that Sitayeb wishes to discuss objects in terms of Eros and Thanatos; i.e., as objects that lead to fulfilment on the one hand, and as objects that lead to self-destruction on the other. He rightly points out, however, that Lawrence's work demonstrates a complex connection between Love and Death and thus his fictitious objects "stimulate at once procreation and destruction, creativity and annihilation". 

 

The result is that death becomes sexy and sex becomes decadent and perverse; not so much tied to an ideal of love, as to numerous paraphlias, often involving objects or the objectification of body parts. Sitayeb mentions several of these, but by no means exhausts the number of kinky elements in Lawrence's work (elements which I have discussed elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: see here, for example). 

 

 

III.

 

Sitayeb's reading of 'The Captain's Doll' in terms of agalmatophilia and pygmalionism is good. Perhaps not as good as mine in terms of dollification - click here - but good nonetheless. He certainly makes some interesting points, such as this one: "The interchangeability between subject and object is conveyed by an inversion of the invariable principles governing mechanic and organic matter." 

 

Similarly, his reading of 'Sun' is good, but not as good as mine: click here. Sitayeb still thinks Juliet's story simply involves an anthropomorphic type of sexuality and Lawrence's "conception of Nature as a macrocosm incorporating man", but it's far more important philosophically than that.   

 

As for 'The Thimble' - a short story that formed the basis of the 1922 novella The Ladybird - the ornate object in question is not first and foremost a symbol of unfulfilled sexual desire and Mrs. Hepburn's fiddling with it is not a form of symbolic masturbation. This lazy and old-fashioned psychosexual reading just bores the pants off me and I really can't fathom why Sitayeb bothers to refer to it.   

 

 

IV. 

 

Sometimes, Sitayeb says things that I do not understand: "Lawrence studied the escalation of desire for both objects and subjects in the presence of imitation and rivalry patterns." But that's probably due to my ignorance of theories to do with mimesis on the one hand (I've certainly never read a word of René Girard) and my suspicion of the concept on the other (I have read a fair deal of Derrida and Deleuze). Nevertheless, I enjoyed Sitayeb's reading of the love triangle in The Fox [3]. 

 

I also enjoyed his excellent reading of 'The White Stocking' - another story involving a love triangle, but this time one "not only composed of human objects of desire", but also including a material item "sexualized to express an unsatisfied ambition such as an impossible sexual act" (i.e., the white stocking). Sitayeb says that this is more precisely termed a split-object triangle and I'll take his word for that. 

 

Sitayeb also notes:    

 

"In the absence of Elsie’s secret lover [...] the eponymous object acts as a reminder of a passionate adulterous dance and a catalyst reactivating the ecstasy of forbidden desire. In the presence of the object, Elsie is invested with a sexual energy, even away from her lover." 

 

And that's true, although I'm not sure I think Elsie vain and superficial simply because she likes silk stockings and jewellery; I mean, who doesn't? But then, having said that, I did call her a 'pricktease with pearl earrings' in a case study published on Torpedo the Ark four years ago: click here.

 

 

V.

 

Ultimately, what Sitayeb wants to suggest is that within consumer society, objects - be they directly or indirectly eroticised - become dangerous shape-shifting agents, as commodity culture becomes increasingly death-driven. And he thinks that's what Lawrence illustrates in 'Things', a tale which tells of the syllomania of an American couple addicted to collecting beautiful objects:

 

"Through their syllomania - the pathological need to acquire and hoard objects [...] - the couple [...] indirectly socializes and sexualizes the various objects that they have purchased to decorate their home by replacing their usual libido sexualis with a libido oeconomicus, thus linking Eros to Thanatos."

 

Sitayeb continues:

 

"Owning or consuming objects procures an immediate and transient feeling of satisfaction verging on ecstasy [...] which is nonetheless quickly replaced by an impression of void when their desire for objects becomes insatiable."      

 

Again, that's an insightful take on Lawrence's work and I was intrigued to see how Sitayeb related this to Baudrillard's thinking on the collusion between subjects and objects, the latter being an author of special interest to me, as torpedophiles will be aware:

 

"Baudrillard's main three arguments to account for men's attraction to trinkets are staged in Lawrence's short story. Both philosopher and author highlighted 1) the escapist function of objects of desire, since they represent a spatial and temporal vehicle transporting their owners into the past of various regions and cultures; 2) the feeling of conquest through the act of collecting, as the collector becomes conqueror; and 3) the access to higher social classes, a pose that D. H. Lawrence evokes with satirical overtones through the detached heterodiegetic narrator of 'Things'."

 

Expanding on this, Sitayeb writes:

 

"Far from attractive to the reader, the couple's bric-à-brac is presented as an overload of useless items due to an accumulation where all the objects are juxtaposed in a concatenation of long compound substantives preceded by adjectives evoking several national origins with little coherence. Just as every decorative item is deprived of real functionality, the words to name them also consist of mere signifiers for the reader, which confirms Baudrillard's idea that the difference between simple objects and objects of desire lies in "'the object's detachment from its functional, experienced reality'." [4]

 

Sitayeb concludes:

 

"Although Lawrence's ideology in 'Things' is comparable to Baudrillard's, the former interpreted the phenomenon as collective, not personal, warning his contemporary readers against the loss of identity resulting from the vain desire for objects, which he perceived as a post-traumatic stigma of a World War One."

 

 

VI.

 

The problem, ultimately, that I have with Sitayeb's reading of Lawrence is that he seems to subscribe to a notion of what Meillassoux termed correlationism - i.e., the idea that "we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other" [5].

Why do I say that - and why does it matter? 

Well, I say it because Sitayeb posits a two-way process wherein the desiring human mind shapes the material universe or world of objects, whilst the latter either fulfil or destroy us, and this permanent and privileged relationship is a form of correlationism, is it not? 

 

And this matters because it serves to make reality mind-dependent and I find such anthropocentrism not only untenable but objectionable - be it in Lawrence's work, or readings of Lawrence's work.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Stéphane Sitayeb, 'Sexualized Objects in D. H. Lawrence’s Short Fiction: Eros and Thanatos', Journal of the Short Story in English, No. 71, (Autumn 2018), pp. 133-147. Click here to read on openedition.org. All lines quoted are from the online version of the essay.

 

[2] It should also be noted that the phallus is not the same as an erect penis; a confusion that we can trace all the way back at least as far as Kate Millett, who claims in her Sexual Politics (1970), that Lawrence is guilty of transforming  his own model of masculinity into a misogynistic mystery religion founded upon the homoerotic worship of the penis. That's unfair and mistaken, as Lawrence himself emphasises that when he writes of the phallus, he is not simply referring to a mere member belonging to a male body and male agent. For Lawrence, the phallus is a genuine symbol of relatedness which forms a bridge not only between lovers, but to the future. Thus fear of the phallus - and frenzied efforts to nullify it in the name of a castrated spirituality, not least by confusing it with the penis - betray a great horror of being in touch. 

      Writing fifty years after Millett, one might have hoped Sitayeb would've not made this same error. I would suggest he see my Outside the Gate (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), where I discuss all this in relation to the case of Lady Chatterley, pp. 233-246. 

 

[3] My recent take on this novella by Lawrence can be found by clicking here. 

 

[4] Sitayeb is quoting from Baudrillard's Le Système des objets (1968), trans. James Benedict as The System of Objects, (Verso, 1996). 

      For me, Baudrillard's later work on objects (in relation, for example, to his theory of seduction) is far more interesting; here, he is still too much influenced by Marxist ideas and basically offers a political critique of consumer capitalism - as if, somehow, the subject might still differentiate themselves from the world of things and resist the evil genuis of the object.

 

[5] Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude,  trans. Ray Brassier, (Continuum, 2008), p. 5.