Notes on 'The Ladybird' (Pt. 1)

Wenn ich ein Marienkäfer wär'

Und auch vier Flüglein hätt',

Flög' ich zu dir -

 

I. 

 

The first work by D. H. Lawrence that I ever wrote about was The Ladybird [a]. Along with The Fox and The Captain's Doll, it formed part of my English A-level syllabus. 

 

My teacher, Mr Woodward, was not impressed with my musings, however, and gave me the lowest mark I'd ever had for an essay (I think it was a D, but that may even have come with a minus symbol). Anyway, I'm hoping to improve upon that here, in this rather more considered series of reflections ... [b]

 

 

II. 

 

The Ladybird opens in a hospital for prisoners of war, in November 1917. 

 

Lady Beveridge was paying a visit to the sick and wounded out of the goodness of her pierced heart. For despite losing two sons and her brother in the War, she loved humanity; "and come what might, she would continue to love it" [157] - including her enemies. It was the Christian thing to do. And besides, she had been educated in Dresden and had many German friends. 

 

Whilst the narrator of the tale seems to admire Lady Beveridge's refusal to be swept up into a general form of hate, it's clear that he's scornful of her universal love and moral idealism, even if he doesn't openly jeer at her "out-of-date righteousness" [158] and bluestocking elegance, like some members of the younger generation.   

 

Whilst walking the wards, Lady Beveridge encounters someone she knows: Count Johann Dionys Psanek. As recently as the spring of 1914, he and his wife had stayed at her country house in Leicestershire. But now he's not in great shape, having had one bullet tear through the upper part of his chest and another bullet break one of his ribs:

 

"The black eyes opened: large, black, unseeing eyes, with curved black lashes. He was a small man, small as a boy, and his face too was rather small. But all the lines were fine, as if they had been fired with a keen male energy. Now the yellowish swarthy paste of his flesh seemed dead, and the fine black brows seemed drawn on the face of one dead. The eyes however were alive: but only just alive, unseeing and unknowing." [159] [c]

 

Poor Lady Beveridge "felt another sword-thrust of sorrow in her heart" [159] as she looked upon what appeared to be a dying man. Then, saddened, she went off to visit her daughter Daphne; yet another of those young women whom Lawrence likes to describe as poor, even though they live in flats overlooking Hyde Park. 

 

Lady Daphne, 25, is tall and good-looking; a natural beauty, with a splendid frame and "lovely, long, strong legs" [160-61]. But, alas, she is wasting away, due to the "wild energy damned up inside her" [161] for which she has no outlet. 

 

For Daphne had married an adorable husband (Basil) and adopted her mother's creed of universal love and benevolence, whereas she needed a daredevil and to be reckless like her father: 

 

"Daphne was not born for grief and philanthropy [...] So her own blood turned against her, beat on her nerves, and destroyed her. It was nothing but frustration and anger which made her ill, and made the doctors fear consumption." [160-61] 

This, of course, is a common theme in Lawrence's work and Lady Daphne is in much the same mould as Lady Chatterley [d]. No suprises then where this tale is headed ...   

 

III.

 

Daphne remembers Count Dionys with genuine fondness. He may have seemed a bit comical and resembled a monkey in her eyes, but he was a dapper little man nonetheless - not to mention "'an amazingly good dancer, small yet electric'" [164]. 

 

Daphne also recalls that Count Dionys presented her with a thimble on her seventeenth birthday. Now, as everybody knows, thimbles were traditionally associated with the ritual of courtship, so it was perhaps not the kind of gift that a married man ought to be giving to a teenage girl. Daphne's acceptance of the thimble, however, arguably indicated her willingness to be more than friends at some point ... 

 

At any rate, Daphne decides to visit the hospital (with her mother at her side, for appearances sake). She wears a black sealskin coat "with a skunk collar pulled up to her ears" [165]. Like many people, she finds being inside a hospital very distressing; "everything gave her a dull feeling of horror" [165]. 

 

But then, the Count finds her somewhat frightening: "He looked at her as if she were some strange creature standing near him." [165] She sits and attempts to make small talk. He tells her that he had wanted to die and that he wouldn't mind if they buried him alive "'if it were very deep, and dark, and the earth heavy above'" [167]. Which is a bit awkward. 

 

It's ten days before she next visits. But go back she does, unable to forget him. Happily, he's looking and feeling better, though his conversation still leaves much to be desired. As a rule, I would advise that when someone kindly brings you flowers and asks if you like them, it's best not to reply: 

 

"'No [...] Please do not bring flowers into this grave. Even in gardens, I do not like them. When they are upholstery to human life!'" [168]

 

Queer, obstinate, and rude only works with a very rare sort of woman - though fortunately for the Count, Daphne is one such: "She sat looking at him with a long, slow wondering look." [169] In other words, she's hooked and even when she's not sitting by his bedside she's thinking of him: "He seemed to come into her mind suddenly, as if by sorcery." [169]

 

And so, over the winter months, their relationship develops ... 

 

 

IV. 

 

One bright morning in February, the Count tells Daphne that he's a subject of the sun. He also reveals that he's a tricophile who believes in the magical healing power of female hair. He asks if, one day, she will allow him to wrap her golden locks round his hands. Whilst not consenting, neither does she rule out his kinky request: "'Let us wait till the day comes,' she said." [171]   

Another time, the Count asks Daphne if people tell her she is beautiful. Before then (rudely and rather cruelly) asking what kind of lover her husband is: "'Is he gentle? Is he tender? Is he a dear lover?'" [172] She replies yes, but curtly, to demonstrate her displeasure at the question - or perhaps at the thought of her husband and his lovemaking technique.  

The Count smiles and informs her that every creature finds its mate; not just the dove and the nightingale, but also the buzzard and the sea-eagle. And the adder with a mouthful of poison. Perhaps not quite sure what he is driving at, nevertheless the last thought makes her give a little laugh.

By the early spring, the Count is able to get up and get dressed. He and Daphne sit on the terrace in the sun, laughing and chatting. He asks her about the thimble and she tells him she still has it. And so he asks her to sew him a shirt [e] - one with his initial and his family crest: a seven-spotted ladybird [f]

However, even when he gets his handsewn shirt, the Count isn't particularly grateful: "'I want my anger to have room to grow'" [177], which is difficult in a shirt that doesn't fit. Daphne decides not to see him again. But, of course, she can't stay away - he has a subtle (but powerful) hold over her; "the strange thrill of secrecy was between them" [179].   

 

 

This post continues in part two (sections V-IX): click here. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The Ladybird was a completely rewritten and extended version of an earier short story by Lawrence - 'The Thimble' - which I have discussed here. It was published in a volume along with two other novellas in 1923. The edition I am using here is The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). All page references given in the post refer to this edition.

 

[b] It's arguable that all my work on Lawrence over the last 40-odd years has, in fact, been an attempt to to compensate for this one low grade and to erase the stain on my early academic record. I suppose also I wanted to find out what it was that I had overlooked in my initial engagement with The Ladybird, a work which, as one critic says, has provoked a wide range of "evaluative judgements, theoretical approaches, and invested interpretations". 

      See Peter Balbert, 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Ladybird: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Cynthia Asquith, And the Incremental Structure of Seduction', Studies in the Humanities, 1 June, 2009, (Indiana University of Pennsylvania): click here to read this essay online via The Free Library. 

[c] Lawrence is keen to emphasise the non-Aryan aspect of the Count's features, with his black hair and beard, and his "queer, dark, aboriginal little face" [159]. As Dieter Mehl writes: "It is made clear that Count Dionys is not of German but of Czech origin, with possible associations of Gipsy [...] blood. Throughout the story, the Count is associated with Eastern races and cultures rather than with Western civilisation." See Mehl's explanatory note 159:35 on p. 258.   

 

[d] It's very tempting to see Lady Daphne as an early version of Lady Chatterley; like the latter, for example, she has a thing for the work-people on her parents estate: 

      "She talked with everybody, gardener, groom, stableman, with the farm hands. [...] The curious feeling of intimacy across a [socio-cultural] breach fascinated her. [...] There was a gamekeeper she could have loved - an impudent, ruddy-faced, laughing, ingratiating fellow [...]" [211]

 

[e] One wonders if the Count shares the same thought as Basil when it comes to wearing a hand-sewn shirt: "'To think I should have it next to my skin! I shall feel you all round me, all over me. I say how marvellous that will be!'" [194] There's something very feminine about this I think; women often like to wear their partner's clothes in order to experience a similar feeling. Researchers have found that the scent of a loved one on clothing can lower the amount of stress hormone cortisol in the brain, making the wearer feel happier and more secure.

 

[f] Later in the story, Daphne's husband Basil asks the Count about the ladybird on his family crest. The latter says it's quite a heraldic insect in his view, with a long history that can be traced all the way back to the mysterious Egyptian scarab: "'So I connect myself to the Pharaohs: just through my ladybird.'" [209] The Count is also happy if this connects him - like the scarab, a type of African dung-beetle - to the principle of decomposition.  

To Hull and Back (In Memory of Gillian Hall)

Lucy Beaumont / Michelle Dewberry

 

 

I. 

 

Lucy Beaumont and Michelle Dewberry are the two women I love most on British television. The former is a comedian and writer, who once worked on the meat counter at ASDA; the latter, a businesswoman and broadcaster, who once worked on the tills at Kwik Save. 

Both are blonde: both are beautiful: both are smart, sexy, and successful - so what's not to love? 

 

However, the thing that makes them particularly attractive - for me at least - is the fact that they share a distinctive English accent, both coming as they do from the fabled city of Hull ...

 

 

II. 

 

Now, I know that Hull - or Kingston upon Hull to give it its royal name - is not everybody's favourite place on earth; Philip Larkin once described it as a fish-smelling dump full of drunken dullards. But even he came to recognise its charms eventually, including, perhaps, its cream-coloured telephone boxes [1].

 

I know also that not everyone finds the Hull accent with its amusing vowel sounds - including the letter 'o', which sounds as if it should have an umlaut over it - as alluring as I do, but there you gö [2]. 

 

I suppose, when I think about it, the reason I like to listen to Lucy Beaumont and Michelle Dewberry on the telly, is because their accent triggers a certain romantic nostalgia, reminding me of lost love and times gone by. 

 

Reminding me, that is to say, of Gillian, the beautiful young punk and self-styled scorpion goddess from Hull [3], with whom I was romantically involved back in the early 1980s and who introduced me to the delights of coition, as well as Humberside.

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Philip Larkin moved to Hull in 1955 to take up the post of head librarian at the university. He soon began expressing his negative feelings for the city and its people in letters written to friends: 'I'm settling down in Hull all right. Every day I sink a little further.' 

      However, he gradually found things to like about Hull, where he lived and worked for thirty years, producing most of his greatest poetry, including 'Here', which opens his collection The Whitsun Weddings (Faber and Faber, 1964): click here to read online. 

      Readers interested in the Larkin/Hull love/hate relationship might enjoy Stephen Walsh's article in The Guardian (30 May 2017): click here.

 

[2] Those who study this kind of thing refer to it as a metaphonic mutation. It means that whereas, for example, the word goat is pronounced ɡəʊt in standard English - and ɡoːt across most of Yorkshire - it becomes ɡɵːʔt̚ in and around Hull. 

      An example of the Hull accent can be found in the British Library's Accents and Dialects Collection: click here to listen to a working class teenage schoolgirl, named Jessica Hardcastle, speak about her family, friends and social life. 

      Readers might also find an article by Jasmine Andersson (23 Jan 2020) on the i News website of interest: click here. 

 

[3] As a matter of fact, Gillian was from Leven, rather than Hull; one of those isolate villages on the outskirts of the city, where lives are clarified by loneliness, as Larkin would say.  

 

  

Sofa So Good: On the Art of Fingering the Furniture (With Reference to D. H. Lawrence's 'The Thimble')

Clifford Hall: Portrait of a Reclining Lady 

(Oil on canvas 48.5 x 59 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

Many people have had sex on a sofa. But only a few establish an erotic relationship with their sofa in the manner of the unnamed 27-year-old woman in D. H. Lawrence's short story 'The Thimble' [a].

 

Usually, the passage in which the woman fondles her sofa, pushing her fingers deep inside, is interpreted as a sign of her sexual frustration and/or unfulfilled sexual desire. And, to be fair, it's true that she hadn't seen her husband for many months - "not since her fortnight's honeymoon with him, and his departure for France" [190] - so perhaps she does have a certain pent up passion.

 

But I like to think that since the honeymoon and his going off to fight, the woman who had "lived and died and come to life again" [190], had also reconfigured her sexuality in a queer new fashion. In other words, I prefer to read Lawrence's text not in terms of what Judith Ruderman calls symbolic masturbation [b], but as an interesting case of objectophilia ...

 

 

II. 

 

It's clear from the beginning of the story that the woman likes nice things. And, although apparently short of money, after renting a small flat in Mayfair - an affluent, upper-class area of London then as now - she fills it with suitable furniture. Only when she has made the flat complete and perfect and is surrounded by many alluring objects, is she satisfied.   

 

Human love, in comparison, has never quite done the trick; she has always remained at some level alone and untouched. And as she awaits the return of her (badly disfigured) husband, she feels a certain cold anxiety. 

 

It's only by putting on her favourite black silk dress and her jewellery that she can feel safe and secure; protected, as it were, by her own finery and fashionable beauty. And it's only by moving her hands "slowly backwards and forwards on the sofa" [194] that she can begin to unwind; "as if the friction of the silk gave her some ease" [194].    

 

But she doesn't stop with simply sliding her hands across the surface of the sofa; she soon progresses to the far more intimate act of digital penetration:

 

"Her right hand came to the end of the sofa and pressed a little into the crack, the meeting between the arm and the sofa bed. Her long white fingers pressed into the fissure, pressed and entered rhythmically, pressed and pressed further and further into the tight depths of the fissure, between the silken, firm upholstery of the old sofa, whilst her mind was in a trance of suspense [...]

      The working, slow, intent fingers pressed deeper and deeper in the fissure of the sofa, pressed and worked their way intently [...] they worked all along, very gradually, along the tight depth of the fissure." [194]

    

In this extraordinary passage, Lawrence gives the practice of couch sex a perverse new twist and makes searching down the back of the settee for loose change (or, as in this case, an old thimble) now seem far less innocent [c].    

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Thimble', in England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 190-200. All page references given in the post refer to this edition.

      Lawrence wrote 'The Thimble' in October 1915 and it was first published in the American literary magazine Seven Arts (March 1917). The sofa-loving woman, Mrs Hepburn, was based on Lady Cynthia Asquith (large feet and all). 

      As the Japanese Lawrence scholar Gaku Iwai points out in the essay cited below, very few critics pay 'The Thimble' much attention - and, to be fair, even Lawrence grew to dislike it, telling his bibliographer Edward McDonald in 1924 that he would "rather like 'The Thimble' to disappear into oblivion" (see Letters V 104). By this date he had, of course, radically revised and extended the tale into the far better known novella The Ladybird (1921).

      See: Gaku Iwai, 'Wartime Ideology in "The Thimble": A Comparative Study of Popular Wartime Romance and the Anti-romance of D. H. Lawrence', Études Lawrenciennes, 46  (2015): click here to read online.   

 

[b] Judith Ruderman, D. H. Lawrence and the Devouring Mother, (Duke University Press, 1984), p. 76.

 

[c] Readers should note that the story doesn't end here, even if the post does. Lawrence ultimately has to reaffirm the love of man and woman - his whole sexual metaphysic is based on such - thus Mr and Mrs Hepburn are reconciled and reborn into a new life of co-dependence and mutual desire, he throwing the thimble she found "embedded in the depths of the sofa-crack" [194] out of the window.  

 

 

Finally, those who have enjoyed this post might find an earlier post in which I discuss Stéphane Sitayeb's essay on sexualized objects in Lawrence’s short fiction of interest: click here.        

Reflections on an Earworm

earworm by jerbing 

society6.com

 

 

I. 

 

I don't know if anyone has ever died from that common form of involuntary cognition known as an earworm [1], but having the same song play over and over in one's head can certainly drive you crazy after a while. 

 

And that's something I can attest to, having had Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal' on repeat for the last few days - and not even the original track [2], but the if-anything-even-catchier version by Alien Ant Farm [3].    

 

I'm pretty sure that, eventually, it will stop. But I do sometimes worry about being reduced to a catatonic state like Gilbert Lister [4]. 

 

For if Greil Marcus is right and listening to the radio is a potentially suicidal gesture [5], then I imagine that sitting alone for hours watching music videos on YouTube "with a blank, entranced expression" like Sir Clifford Chatterley is equally self-destructive [6].

 

Síomón Solomon touched on these ideas in relation to his own audiopoetics, in Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2021): click here. But the theorist who has comprehensively developed ideas of listening and written a fascinating history of the ear, is the French philosopher and musicologist Peter Szendy [7] ...  

 

 

II.

 

In his histoire de nos oreilles (2001), Szendy critiques the Romantic and Modernist conceptions of listening and offers an alternative (poststructuralist) model informed by the work of Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida, and so full of ideas to do with otherness and issues of power, for example. 

 

And in his philosophie dans le juk-box (2008), Szendy analyses how haunting popular melodies can form a bridge between the individual's unconscious and the workings of the global market, as their thoughts feelings, dreams, and desires are all captured and expressed in three-minutes of pop perfection. 

 

We think we are listening to the soundtrack of our lives when we play our favourite songs over and over, but, actually, the banging tunes that worm their way into our heads and hearts are produced by a recorded music industry with an annual revenue of around $20 billion [8].

 

The hit song, Szendy argues, functions like a myth; a force of repetition that grows by force of repetition. And it is also an insidious form of bio-melo-technology which is there to produce a docile subject happy and free to sing along. 

 

Of course, this is not a new insight: the artist Jamie Reid recognised long ago that music keeps you under control ... Why d'you think they pipe it out in the shopping malls?

 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The term, earworm, is a loan translation - or what linguists like to call a calque - from the German Ohrwurm and was coined by the English journalist and writer Desmond Bagley in his 1978 novel Flyaway.

 

[2] Michael Jackson, 'Smooth Criminal', 1988 single release from the album Bad, (Epic, 1987): click here for the official full-length video, dir. Colin Chilvers.

 

[3] Alien Ant Farm, 'Smooth Criminal', single release from the album Anthology, (Dreamworks, 2001): click here for Marc Klasfeld's video, which pays an amusing homage to Jackson.     

[4] In Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Ultimate Melody' (1957), scientist Gilbert Lister develops a tune that is so perfectly synchronised with the electrical rhythms of the brain that its listener becomes fatally enraptured by it. This is a surprisingly familiar theme within fiction.

 

[5] Greil Marcus, The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs, (Yale University Press, 2015), p. 33. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 110. 

 

[7] See, for example, the following works by Peter Szendy available in English translation:

      - Listen: a history of our ears, trans. Charlotte Mandell, (Fordham University Press, 2008).

      - Hits: Philosophy in the Jukebox, trans. Will Bishop, (Fordham University Press, 2011).

      - All Ears: The Aesthetics of Espionage, trans. Roland Végső, (Fordham University Press, 2017).  

 

[8] According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the recorded music market grew by 7.4% in 2020, mostly thanks to streaming, and figures released in their 2021 Global Music Report show total revenues for 2020 were $21.6 billion. Readers who are interested in knowing more can click here and go to the IFPI website.  

In Times of Sorrow and Fear is When Poets Appear

Ireland's greatest living poet 

and America's greatest ever Speaker

 

I. 

 

Irish poetry has a long and illustrious history. 

 

Whether written in Gaelic, in English, or formed within the complex interplay of these two languages and traditions, no one can deny that the bards of Ireland - both in their medieval and modern incarnations - have produced a body of work that is uniquely rich and worthy of admiration.   

 

Arguably, however, Irish poetry this week scaled new heights and we can now add the name of Bono to a roll call of honour that includes Swift, Wilde, Yeats, and Heaney ...

 

 

II. 

 

I know that his St. Patrick's Day poem for Ukraine has been much mocked and dubbed by some as the worst poem ever written - I even saw it described, shamefully, as a war crime in its own right, inflicting unnecessary suffering upon those who have had the misfortune to hear it. 

 

I find that shocking and I simply don't understand all the personal abuse and ridicule aimed at mega-rich rock superstar Bono, who is attempting to bring a message of peace and love to the world. But, as Taylor Swift once famously said, the haters gonna hate (hate, hate, hate, hate, hate) and it's up to the rest of us to rise above their animosity and shake off all negative vibes.

 

Bono's poem is a profoundly beautiful verse and I will be forever grateful to the first female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, for sharing it - in her own inimitable manner - during the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon, held at the White House earlier this week: click here. 

 

I didn't think I'd ever read lines more moving than those written by William McGonagall, recounting the terrible events of December 28th, 1879 (i.e., the Tay Bridge disaster in Dundee). But Bono has surpassed even this glorious verse with lines like these:

 

They struggle for us to be free 

From the psycho in our human family 

Ireland's sorrow and pain 

Is now the Ukraine 

And Saint Patrick's name now Zelenskyy.

 

Brilliant. 

 

Now send on the Riverdancers ...

 

 

 

I Still Dream of Orgonon: Notes on the Strange Life and Times of Wilhelm Reich (Part 2: The American Years)

Wilhelm Reich (1890-1957)

 

Folge der Stimme deines Herzens, auch wenn 

sie dich vom Pfad schüchterner Seelen abführt [1]

 

 

III. The American Years 

 

Reich arrived in New York in September 1939, having accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the New School of Social Research, teaching a course on the 'Biological Aspects of Character Formation'. Despite certain misgivings, which he expressed in his diary, one likes to think Reich secretly had high hopes for his new life in the New World; for, as the song says, life can be bright in America ... [2] 

Alone in a strange country and without much else to do in the evenings, Reich began experimenting on mice (as you do); injecting them with bions. Soon afterwards, however, he met the woman who was to become his second wife (and lab assistant) Ilse Ollendorff, so presumably had something else to occupy him at night. 

It was shortly after he arrived in the US that Reich announced his discovery of a bio-cosmic force that he called orgone energy (or, sometimes, orgone radiation). This, arguably, is the thing most people remember him for today (if they remember him at all). Reich claimed to have observed it emanating from the mice after injecting them, as well as in the night sky through a special telescope he called an organoscope.   

Indeed, according to Reich, orgone energy was present everywhere and in everything; from the blue of the sky to the blue of sexually excited frogs; from red blood cells to the chlorophyll of plants. In 1940, he began to construct orgone accumulators; a modified Faraday cage made of wood and lined with stone wool and sheet iron. 

 

Initially they were designed for lab animals, but he soon knocked up some human-sized sex boxes, as they became known, and volunteers from amongst his patients were encouraged to sit inside - naked, of course. Soon, he was claiming that his orgone accumulators could not only treat schizophrenia, but cure cancer and that he was on the verge of producing a unified theory of physical and mental health. 

 

Hoping to have his ideas scientifically endorsed, Reich contacted and met with Albert Einstein in January 1941. Although initially encouraged by their discussion - and the fact that the latter agreed to home-test a small orgone accumulator - Reich was ultimately disappointed when Einstein wrote to him to say thanks, but no thanks. 

 

And despite Reich pestering the physicist with lengthy letters reporting his latest experimental results, Einstein refused to reconsider the matter and eventually wrote asking that his name not be used in connection with the accumulator. Reich suspected this was all part of the same conspiracy which had cost him his position at the New School in May 1941 and seen him evicted from his apartment after neighbours complained about his strange experiments.    

  

Now things quickly went from bad to worse: after the German declaration of war in December 1941, Reich was arrested by the FBI and taken to Ellis Island, where he was held for three weeks on suspicion of being an enemy alien. Even after his release, he was placed under surveillance (admittedly, this was unfair since Reich was both Jewish and an ardent anti-fascist, forced to flee his homeland because of the Nazis). 

 

Undeterred, Reich purchased an old farm in Maine, in November 1942, and slowly built this up as his home and research centre, calling it Orgonon. In 1950, accompanied by his wife and two children, as well as several colleagues and an artist friend, he moved there on a full-time basis. [3]

 

Up until this time, Reich's activities had attracted little interest from the American press and the coverage he did receive was largely uncritical, if bemused. But suddenly his reputation came under attack and his work was branded pseudo-scientific nonsense which made many false or misleading claims. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigated and concluded that Reich was, indeed, a fraud of the first magnitude [4].

 

And he didn't help matters when, in 1950, he established the Orgonomic Infant Research Centre (OIRC): it's one thing asking adults to strip off and sit in a box, but to involve naked young children in your reserach is never a good idea; several who were treated by OIRC therapists later claimed they had been physically and sexually abused - although not by Reich - and he agreed to close the Centre in 1952 in order to avoid a court case involving one of his team.         

 

By this date, Reich had also divorced his wife on the suspicion that she'd had an affair; what was good for the gander wasn't so good for the goose, it seems. Ilse nevertheless continued working alongside him for another three years, but only after signing confessions about her infidelity and secret feelings of fear and hatred for him.

 

When not denouncing his ex-wife, Reich was telling everyone he knew about his latest discovery - deadly orgone radiation, which, he said, caused desertification; a problem that, conveniently, could be solved with his new cloudbusting technology (basically a number of 15-foot metal pipes mounted on a mobile platform and connected to cables that were inserted into water). 

 

Reich insisted that his cloudbuster could unblock orgone energy in the atmosphere and cause rain. He described his new research as cosmic orgone engineering. Unusually, this did not seem to require that anyone remove their clothes or agree to a massage.  

 

Meanwhile, the FDA were continuing their investigations and in the spring of 1954 obtained an injunction against the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and promotional literature for said devices. Reich refused to appear in court, arguing that no judge was in a position to evaluate his work on primordial, pre-atomic cosmic orgone energy - which is true, but then, who is?          

 

Perhaps annoyed by Reich's non-appearance and insulted by his attitude (as expressed in a letter), the judge not only granted the injunction, but instructed that accumulators, parts and instructions be destroyed, and that several of Reich's books that mentioned orgone be withdrawn from circulation. 

 

Of course, Reich being Reich, he thought this further evidence of the conspiracy against him; a conspiracy he now believed had extraterrestrial origins. And so he started chasing UFOs (or energy alphas) which he saw zipping across the skies over Orgonon, leaving black streams of deadly orgone radiation in their wake. When he thought one was in range, Reich would fire a cloudbuster at it, in the hope that this would drain away the negative energy (and thus save planet Earth) [5]. 

 

And Reich being Reich, he of course violated the injunction against him and so was charged with contempt of court in 1956. Initially refusing to attend court to fight the charge, Reich eventually decided to defend himself, pleading not guilty, whilst at the same time admitting that one of his associates had sent an accumulator part through the post. 

 

The jury were not sympathetic to his tale of an alien controlled conspiracy and the judge discreetly suggested to Ilse Ollendorff that she might consider finding psychiatric help for her ex-husband. Thus, Reich was found guilty and sentenced to two years in jail. The Wilhelm Reich Foundation was also fined $10,000 (equivalent to around $104,000 today) and any remaining orgone accumulators had to be destroyed by court order; which they were, along with over six tonnes of Reich's books, journals and papers.       

 

Reich appealed the decision, but lost. He also wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, but to no avail. And so, on March 12, 1957, Reich entered Danbury Federal Prison (Connecticut), where he was examined by a psychiatrist who recorded paranoia, manifested by delusions of grandiosity and persecution. A week later, Reich was transferred to the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary and examined again. This time it was decided that whilst he was mentally competent, he could become psychotic if unduly stressed.

 

Fellow inmates referred to Reich as either the flying saucer nut, or the sex box guy. He told his son that he passed the time studying mathematics and crying. When, having served one-third of his sentence, he became eligible for parole, Reich expressed his hopes for the future and looked forward to regaining his liberty. Unfortunately, he died of heart failure, aged sixty, just days before his parole hearing and likely release.

 

 

IV. Closing Remarks

 

Reich was buried in a vault at Orgonon, without ceremony. No academic journals saw fit to publish obituaries. Former friends within the psychoanalytic community who had at one time thought him brilliant, also stayed schtum, perhaps not wanting to speak ill of the dead (their general view being that he had become an embarrassment to himself and the profession).  

 

Nevertheless, in the years since his death - and for all his crackpottery - his work has significantly shaped developments within psychotherapy and influenced a number of intellectuals and artists, including William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and - as mentioned in part one of this post - Deleuze and Guattari. 

 

To tell the truth, I'm amazed that anyone bothers to take his work seriously today - but then some people also continue to read Jung! Perhaps, being a tad more generous, we might paraphrase something that Camille Paglia once said of Freud: Critics always miss the point because they think he produced pseudoscience, when in fact he created great art. [6]  

 

And besides, even false facts and fake discoveries can have real effects ...

 

Notes

 

[1] In English, this reads: 'Always follow your heart, even if it leads you from the path of timid souls.' It is just the kind of clichéd romantic nonsense that I would have thought profound when young, but which now makes me roll my eyes.     

[2] I'm quoting from 'America', a song written by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein for the musical West Side Story (1957). 

[3] Readers might be interested to know it is now the Wilhelm Reich Museum and holiday cottages are available to rent, including the cabin Reich himself lived in. 

[4] In return, Reich labelled the FDA hoodlums and fascists. Believing himself to have the support of President Eisenhower, he was as uncooperative with invesitgators from the FDA as he could be, though they continued to go about their work, interviewing his colleagues, students, and patients. Apparently, one university professor who had bought an orgone accumulator, told them that he knew the device was useless, but it secured him domestic tranquility as his wife was happy to quietly sit in it for several hours each day.  

 

[5] Reich even rented a house in Arizona in order to stage a full-scale battle with the aliens and thought there was a very remote possibility that his own father had, in fact, been from outer space. In a sense, Reich by this stage of his life and career has more in common with David Icke than he does with Freud.   

 

[6] See Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, (Yale University Press, 1990), p. 228. Paglia's actual line reads: "Freud has no rivals among his successors because they think he wrote science, when in fact he wrote art." 

 

 

To read part one of this post - on the European years - click here.  

 

 

I Still Dream of Orgonon: Notes on the Strange Life and Times of Wilhelm Reich (Part 1: The European Years)

Wilhem Reich (1897-1957)

Photo possibly by A. A. Brill (c. 1922)

 

Once we open up to the flow of energy within our body, 

we can also open up to the flow of energy in the universe.

I. Opening Remarks

 

I could have featured Reich in my recent series on the grand perverts of Austria, but decided that he is such a unique figure that he deserves a post in his own right. 

 

I'm not, however, very familiar with his work: I once read an English translation of Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus  (1933) [1] and a funny little book entitled Listen, Little Man! (1948), in which he outlined his political philosophy (an idiosyncratic form of libertarian socialism). 

 

Mostly I know of Reich due to the fact that he's mentioned with admiration by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1983) [2]. 

 

That, and the fact that Kate Bush once wrote a song inspired by him [3].

 

 

II. The European Years

 

Wilhelm Reich was born in 1897, in Dobzau, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but now in western Ukraine and awaiting the arrival of Russian bombs and soldiers. 

 

Although both his parents were Jewish, Wilhelm was brought up to speak only German and punished for using Yiddish expressions, or playing with the local Yiddish-speaking children. Oy vey! 

 

Wilhelm was homeschooled until the age of twelve. But when his mother was discovered having an affair with his live-in tutor and soon afterwards committed suicide, he was sent off to an all boys' school. Reich would later write about these events in his first published paper, detailing his shame and guilt, but also expressing his own incestuous fantasies involving his mother.

 

After the War, in which he served on the Italian front, Reich headed for Vienna, where he enrolled in law at the University. However, he found the subject tedious and so switched to medicine. Although he found this much more to his liking, he rejected the mechanistic concept of life which then dominated in favour of a more vitalist philosophy.

 

In 1919, he had a fateful first meeting with Freud, from whom he had requested a reading list for a seminar on sexology. Interestingly, it seems they left an equally strong impression on one another and Freud smoothed the younger man's way into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and encouraged him to start meeting with patients of his own; one of whom, 19-year-old Lore Kahn, he was soon fucking, even though Freud had advised not to get romantically involved with patients.

 

Sadly, she became seriously ill and died shortly after the affair with Reich began [4]. Swiftly putting his grief to one side, he then seduced another patient, Annie Pink - an 18-year-old medical student and friend of Frl. Kahn's - though he did eventually do the decent thing and marry her, at the insistence of her father, and she went on to become a well-known shrink in her own right.    

 

Despite what would now be regarded as gross professional misconduct (at the very least), Reich was apppointed deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic and he worked there until 1930, forming his own theories on human psychology to do with repetitive patterns of behaviour, speech, and physical posture serving as ego defence mechanisms, or what he termed character armour.     

 

Reich was highly regarded by his contemporaries and colleagues at this time and many found his lectures and seminars spellbinding. His first book was also well received and won him further professional recognition, including from Freud, who in 1927 arranged for his appointment to the executive committee of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.   

 

Thus, everything was coming up Rosen for Reich and he seemed to have a bright future ahead; despite one of his early patients protesting that Reich was, in fact, a psychopath; and despite the fact that Freud was increasingly concerned about the theory that psychic health depended upon the full discharge of libidinal energy. 

 

Such ideas, tolerated at first within the psychoanalytic community, would later be ridiculed. And when Reich tried to reconcile his new theories with Marxism, he would increasingly be regarded as part sexual revolutionary and part sexual lunatic (although, to be fair, he was certainly not the only intellectual attempting to marry psychoanalysis and Marxism at this time).     

 

In 1927, Reich opened half-a-dozen Sex-Pol clinics in Vienna, where members of the proletariat could receive free psychoanalysis, political instruction, and contraceptives. These proved so popular that Reich also took to the streets in a mobile clinic and began distributing sex-education pamphlets door to door.

 

This same year also saw publication of Die Funktion des Orgasmus, which he dedicated to Freud. Unfortunately, the latter was not overly impressed and took two months before sending a short thank you note (which didn't go down too well with Reich). Freud's view, essentially, was that it was an oversimplification to view everything in terms of orgastic potency.   

 

In 1930, Reich and his wife moved to Berlin, where he continued his work and set up more Sex-Pol clinics. Although he joined the German Communist Party, his new comrades were troubled by his promotion of sexual freedom for everybody - including adolescents - and they eventually refused to publish his material. 

 

And so Reich discovered that moral puritanism belongs as much on the radical left as the reactionary right. 

 

Having said that, it was the Nazis who, in 1933, most vociferously attacked his work and forced him to flee Germany with his mistress, a dancer called Elsa Lindenberg. The couple initially retreated to Vienna, then moved to Denmark, Sweden, and finally settled in Norway, where he and Lindenberg were to remain for five years [5].

 

It was whilst in Oslo, that Reich attempted to ground his orgasm theory in biology, exploring whether the libido was in fact a form of bio-electricity or a chemical substance [6]. These investigations led on to his bion experiments, where he played Dr. Frankenstein and sought to create rudimentary new forms of life (and explain the origin of cancer). 

 

Unsurprisingly, many within the scientific community in Norway expressed their scepticism regarding Reich's work. Whilst some simply dismissed his theories on bions as nonsense, others accused him of being ignorant of even basic scientific procedures and micro-biological facts. When in 1938 his visa expired, several scientists argued against this being renewed and his case became something of a cause célèbre in Norway [7]. 

 

When Reich eventually left Norway, he did so feeling a little humiliated and full of anger for those who had denounced him and ridiculed his work. The scandal - and his various love affairs - had also taken its toll on his relationship with Lindenberg. And thus when Reich asked her to accompany him to the United States, she declined, leaving him to set sail all on his lonesome. 

 

Details of Reich's American years can be found in part two of this post: click here.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It was the 1983 Pelican edition, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans. Vincent R. Carfagno.

 

[2] For Deleuze and Guattari, Reich deserves credit for being the first to address the question of the relationship between desire and the social field (and for daring to go further in this direction than Marcuse). Whilst admitting his work has its problematic aspects, they find Reich's comparison of sexuality with cosmic phenomena, such as electrical storms or sunspot activity, preferable to Freud's "reduction of sexuality to the pitiful little familialist secret" and it was Reich, more than anyone else, who upheld the great perverse truth of psychoanalysis, i.e., "the independence of sexuality with regard to reproduction".

      See: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 291-92.

 

[3] Kate Bush, 'Cloudbusting', a single release from Hounds of Love, (EMI, 1985): click here to play and watch the offical video, dir. Julian Doyle, and ft. Donald Sutherland in the role of Wilhelm Reich.

 

[4] Lore Kahn's parents claimed that their daughter had died after a botched illegal abortion, possibly performed by Reich himself. Whilst recognising the tragedy of what happened, Reich also found his role within the young woman's death and subsequent suicide of her mother absurdly amusing, noting in his diary: 'I am acting out a comedy, while causing the people around me to die!'   

 

[5] Hopes that he might be able to set up shop in London were dashed when it became clear that support from the psychoanalytic circle in England was not going to be forthcoming. It had been decided that Reich had unresolved hostility issues and was living in a world of his own. 

      The unique form of treatment Reich developed from 1930 onwards also caused eyebrows to be raised and alarm bells to sound. Based on touch, it involved patients stripping off and allowing him to perform a special type of massage in order to loosen their body armour (i.e., their muscular and characterological rigidity). In the hope of retrieving repressed childhood memories and triggering genuine feelings, Reich would also ask patients to physically simulate certain emotions (such as anxiety, rage, and ecstasy). If the session was successful, he claimed to see waves of pleasure move through the bodies of his patients (what he called the orgasm reflex or streaming). Initially wanting to call this new treatment orgasmotherapy, Reich evetually settled on the name of vegetotherapy (i.e., arousal therapy).  

 

[6] In 1935, Reich also bought an oscillograph and attached it to student volunteers at the University of Oslo, who agreed to touch and kiss each other while he monitored the results. As you do ...

 

[7] The affair generated a good deal of press coverage throughout 1938, with more than 165 articles and letters appearing in Norwegian newspapers, the vast majority of which attacked Reich and his work. 

Footnote on Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Margaret Qualley as Pussycat

in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Quentin Tarantino's penchant for bare female feet in his films has been well-documented - one might think of Uma Thurman, as Mia Wallace, in Pulp Fiction (1994), or Bridget Fonda as Melanie in Jackie Brown (1997) - and for those who share this particular fetish Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) doesn't disappoint.    

There are multiple foot shots and both Margot Robbie, as Sharon Tate, and Margaret Qualley as Manson Family member Pussycat [1], have their shoes off for a considerable amount of screen time (1 min. 26 seconds and 1 minute respectively).

 

Tarantino has naturally been asked about this and, in recent a GQ interview, said:

 

"I don’t take it seriously. There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors' movies. [...] Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel [...] And Hitchcock was accused of it [...]” [2] 

 

It's interesting to discover that Tarantino doesn't take accusations of being a foot festishist seriously - which isn't quite the same as denying his podophilia. And he's right to point out that other directors have also been accused of the same thing.  

 

I think film critics who complain that Tarantino's shots of feet don't serve any narrative purpose, either don't know (or don't understand) the history of cinema and its inherenty kinky aesthetic (founded as it is upon exhibitionism and voyeurism, for example). 

 

Nor might they know that the real Sharon Tate loved going barefoot in public and when she went to restaurants where this might be a problem, she would put rubber bands around her ankles in order to create the illusion that she was wearing sandals.  

 

And so, to suggest that Tarantino just includes these shots for his own sexual pleasure is, therefore, ignorant and insulting to him as a director. 

 

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, for example, the scenes in which Tate puts her bare feet up on the back of the seat in front of her at the cinema and Pussycat puts her bare feet up on the dashboard of the car being driven by Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), tell us something significant; namely, that whereas Tate has successfully stamped her mark on the silver screen, Pussycat and her fellow Manson Family members will merely leave a nasty stain on popular culture, like the mark left by a squashed bug on a windscreen.

 

As to why it is that the soles of Tate's feet are dirty, whilst the soles of Pussycat's feet are clean in comparison, well, I'm no Christian Metz, but perhaps Tarantino is suggesting that the former will have her sins forgiven and her feet washed clean by the tears of love and laughter she inspires in others [3], whereas Pussycat, who has deliberately chosen to take the path of evil and follows in the devil's footsteps, is deceptively clean and attractive on the outside, but corrupt of soul and filthy of mouth [4].     

Notes

[1] The character of Pussycat is a composite figure inspired by several of Manson's real followers, including Ruth Ann Moorehouse, whom Manson frequently sent into the city to entice men with money back to Spahn Ranch, and Kathryn ('Kitty Kat') Lutesinger. 

 

[2] See the interview with Tarantino by John Phipps in GQ magazine (3 Sept 2021): click here. 

[3] To watch the scene with Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate at the movie theatre in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), click here. 

 

[4] To watch the scene with Margaret Qualley as Pussycat hitching a ride from Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), click here. 

 

 

Grand Austrian Perverts 3: Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) [1]

Photo by Max Halberstadt (c. 1921)

 

A sexual act is perverse if it has abandoned the aim of reproduction 

and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it.

 

 

I. 

 

So far in this series on großen Perversen Österreichs, we have discussed the cases of Arthur Schnitzler and Egon Schiele [2]. 

 

But I could have very easily have selected another writer - Sacher-Masoch, for example - just as I might have chosen another painter as the subject of my study, such as Gustav Klimt. For there are plenty of grand perverts [3] in the world - particularly in the arts - and Austria has its fair share of 'em.

 

This dilemma of choice is just as real within the world of psychoanalysis: Otto Gross and Wilhelm Reich certainly have strong claims to be considered within this series, for example. 

 

However, I've already written a post in memory of the former [click here] and although the latter - with his orgone accumulators and sex-pol clinics, etc. - is certainly an interesting figure, ultimately, one can't help thinking back to the man who initially inspired them both, Sigmund Freud ...

 

 

II.

 

Freud has a good claim on being perhaps the grandest of all grand perverts; one who understood how the inherently perverse nature of human sexuality - and the manner in which the perversions are either repressed or sublimated - is central to the reproduction of heteronormative civilisation.           

 

Although, as a reader of Lawrence and Deleuze, I am obviously not a Freudian, I will always be grateful for his insight that one does not become a pervert; that one is, rather, born such. And that even after healthy adult individuals renounce the polymorphously perverse pleasures of childhood in favour of undeviating genital intercourse, these kinks don't just disappear, but return in a multiplicity of strange forms.   

 

Indeed, for Freud, no matter how necessary it is to repress the perverse aspects of our nature - and no matter how well we sublimate such pleasures (even to the point of neurosis) -  "some perverse trait or other is seldom absent from the sexual life of normal people" [4] - even if this is just the desire to explore the mouth of one's lover with one's tongue in a passionate kiss. 

 

As Freud says, far from being that which transcends perversion, love is that which liberates it: "Being in love [...] has the power to remove repressions and reinstate perversions" [5] - that's what makes it so intensely exciting and feel so dangerous. 

 

It's unfortunate, therefore, that as psychoanalysis developed it became increasingly hostile to perversions and paraphilias. Whether Freud himself was responsible for this, or whether certain reactionary followers appropriated and contained his more radical ideas within a more traditional metaphysical schema, is debatable.     

 

Commentators who wish to stress the revolutionary nature of Freud's project will perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt, arguing that his work subverts traditional theories of sexuality, even if, ultimately, he remains an idealist. Jonathan Dollimore, for example, suggests that Freud's theory of the perversions retains and develops the paradoxes and displacements that give it its dynamic nature [6]. 

 

I think that's true. And I also agree with Dollimore when he writes that Freud is unrelenting in finding perversion "in those places where it is conventionally thought to be most absent" [7] - such as childhood. 

 

For children are not just sexual beings, but their sexuality is quintessentially perverse. Like that of many artists and intellectuals, who retain a certain quality of childlike innocence about them even when exploring illicit desires and forbidden pleasures.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm not - for obvious reasons - going to try and provide full details of Freud's life and work here in this short post; rather, I just wish to discuss his theory of perversion, the aspect of his psychoanalytic project that interests me most. However, for those who would like the very barest of biographical facts ... 

      Born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in May 1865, Freud qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna, the city where he lived and worked for most of his life, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. 

      In 1938, Freud fled Austria to escape Nazi persecution (his books were prominent amongst those burnt in 1933) and he died in London in 1939. 

      As the founder of psychoanalysis, his influence upon Western thought and culture in the 20th-century has been immense and he is often named alongside Marx and Nietzsche as one of the three great masters of suspicion (a term coined by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur). And even if, today, psychoanalysis as a diagnostic and clinical practice is in decline and many of his ideas contested, Freud's writings as a form of fiction-theory, remain of great interest to many scholars across the humanities. 

      As D. H. Lawrence wrote in his Introduction to Fantasia of the Unconscious (1923), we should be grateful that Freud insisted on the importance of the sexual element in our lives: "We are thankful that Freud pulled us somewhat to earth, out of all our clouds of superfineness."   

    

[2] For the post on Schnitzler, click here. For the post on Schiele, click here. 

[3] 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.

[4] Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1 in the Pelican Freud Library (Penguin Books, 1973), p. 364. 

 

[5] Sigmund Freud,  On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 11 in the Pelican Freud Library (Penguin Books, 1984), p. 95.

 

[6] Jonathan Dollimore, 'The Cultural Politics of Perversion: Augustine, Shakespeare, Freud, Foucault', originally published in Genders No. 8: (University of Texas Press, Summer 1990), pp. 1-16, but which can now be read in the open access online version of Genders on the University of Colorado website: click here.    

      In this brilliant essay - which has informed my thinking here and elsewhere - Dollimore attempts (amongst other things) to sketch out the far-reaching implications of Freud's theory of the perverse; to show how, at the very least, "a range of central binary oppositions (spiritual/carnal, pure/degenerate, normal/abnormal), oppositions upon which the social order depends, are either inverted, removed, or collapsed into a relational interdependence".

 

[7] Ibid.