On the Theatre of Royalty

Portrait of King George V 

by Luke Fildes (c. 1911)

 

I.

 

Asked to comment in a TV interview on the pageantry surrounding the Queen's death and Charles's succession to the throne, the English historian David Starkey pointed out that a lot of it is distinctly modern - if not in origin, then in form and character - and belongs not to some golden age of monarchy, but to the era of democracy, advertising, and the entertainment industry.

 

As even the Queen herself recognised, a constitutional monarchy that ultimately serves rather than rules the people, is obliged to put on a show; to be seen so as to be believed. 

 

But what Starkey calls the conscious development of public ceremony could, of course, have involved abandoning the past and attempting to appear bang up to date; away with the horse-drawn carriages and the ancient regalia and in with the royal motorcade and contemporary dress worn even on the most formal of occasions. 

 

 

II.

 

According to Starkey, it was King George V - Queen Elizabeth's grandfather - who was responsible for many of the innovations in royal life that we now think of as ancient and crucial, rather than modern and arbitrary; which is ironic, because George was profoundly conservative and hated modernity in every regard (including its fashions and its technological advances). 

 

Nevertheless, Starkey calls George V a royal revolutionary and argues that his actions - and those of his father before him, King Edward VII - ensured the survival of the monarchy via a renewal of public ceremony [1]. 

 

Let's discuss this in a little more detail ...

 

George's coronation in 1911 is, says Starkey, the most magnificent since the 17th-century, if not even earlier; carefully planned and rehearsed in every detail, it makes the coronation of nineteen-year-old Queen Victoria in 1838 look, in comparison, relatively low key and amateurish - if not, indeed, shambolic.

 

George may not much care for life in the 20th-century, but he's aware of the fact that he must, in the age of Demos, garner popular support and put on a good show combining splendour and discipline, if he's to avoid the fate of his cousin Nicholas in Russia and cousin Wilhelm in Germany. 

 

In other words, monarchy must become performative and professional; the very real threat of revolution was countered with theatricality and, at the same time, a new sense of moral seriousness. George also decides that everything must be anglicised, or, more precisely, de-Germanified. And so the House of Hanover (an imperial German dynasty) becomes the House of Windsor (an English family that is essentially bourgeois in character). 

 

It is a choice of name which, according to Starkey, is a stroke of genius; for Windsor is a name that suggests history, pageantry, and legend (not to mention soap and Shakespeare). The marriage customs of this new Royal House are also novel; from now on, members will be able to marry native Englishmen and women and not be obliged to find German spouses. 

 

Thus, whilst George may hate the modern world, he sees the necessity of conforming to its values. It's his duty to do so - this, aguably, being the word that now best defines the essence of what the Royal Family is all about today. Whereas monarchs of old felt answerable to no one but God, the Windsor's feel it is their duty to serve the nation or the Great British Public.  

 

Which, when you think about it, is about as far as possible from the ancient aristocratic ideal of monarchy - based on sacred authority and divine right - as you can get ... [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers who are interested in what Starkey has to say on this subject, can click here to visit his YouTube channel - David Starkey Talks - and enjoy a 45 minute lecture. Part 2 of this post is a (hopefully accurate) summary of some of the fascinating things that Starkey informs us of. 

[2] I touch on this in a recent post discussing the proclaiming of a new king - King Charles III - following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, just over a week ago: click here.  

What If the Nazis Had Embraced Modern Art?

Joseph Goebbels - Reichminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda -

pays a visit to the Exhibition of Degenerate Art in Munich (1937)

 

'We National Socialists are not unmodern; we are the carrier of a new modernity, 

not only in politics and in social matters, but also in art and intellectual matters.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

As everybody knows, the Nazis were on a mission to cleanse Germany of bolshevism in all its forms, including so-called cultural bolshevism, a term widely used to denounce progressive and experimental trends in the world of contemporary art, music, and literature.

 

Thus, after coming to power in 1933, the Nazis prevented many artists from working or taking up teaching posts, replaced museum curators with loyal Party members, and, most notoriously, organised mass book burning events.

 

However, I'm pretty certain I once read that at least some leading Nazis were in favour of embracing modern art - providing of course it was produced by artists of pure Aryan blood who held the appropriate political views. 

 

If it was okay for Mussolini to couple Fascism with Futurism, then why shouldn't they celebrate certain works of German Expressionism - such as those by Emil Nolde or Erich Heckel, for example, which were said to exemplify the Nordic spirit and had parallels with German medieval and folk art. 

 

Even Joseph Goebbels, not wanting to be seen as a narrow-minded defender of bourgeois values, was open to the argument and, in texts written prior to 1933, spoke enthusiastically of the new, the radical, and the revolutionary [2] - or what we might simply call the modern. 

 

Indeed, the soon to be Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda had several works hanging on the walls of his Berlin apartment that would be branded in 1937 as Entartete Kunst (the Nazi mistranslation, as some wag said, of avant-garde).

 

Hitler, however, was having none of it - as made clear in a speech in the autumn of 1934, wherein he denounced modern artists as criminal lunatics and declared that under no circumstances would their incompetent rubbish play any role in the cultural rebirth of Germany. As far as he was concerned, any work that didn't conform to the aesthetic values of the Classical world was Un-German and corrupted by the Marxist-Jewish spirit. 

 

Goebbels, one of Hitler's closest and most devoted acolytes, thus quietly removed any offending pictures from his walls and, in 1937, he conceived the idea of an exhibition of works from the Weimar period - which he termed the era of decay - that would contrast with the forthcoming Great German Art Exhibition intended to showcase work approved by the Führer; statuesque blonde nudes, idealised landscapes, etc.

 

Hitler loved the idea and on 30 June signed an order authorising Die Ausstellung Entartete Kunst ...

 

Goebbels appointed Adolf Ziegler - one of Hitler's favourite painters and head of the Reich Chamber of Visual Art - in charge of a small team who toured state galleries and museums in numerous cities seizing thousands of works they deemed degenerate and showing signs of racial impurity [3].   

The exhibition opened in Munich on 19 July - one day after the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung - and included 650 modernist pieces, chaotically hung and accompanied by notices encouraging the viewer to ridicule the work and vilify the artist responsible.

 

Ironically, however, over a million people visited this exhibition in Munich; three times more than visited the one consisting of the very best that German art had to offer. This is perhaps not surprising when one considers that works by many leading international artists - such as Klee, Kokoschka, and Kandinsky - were on display. When the show toured other German and Austrian cities, it attracted a million more visitors [4]. 

 

II.

So, finally, we return to the question asked in the title of this post: What if the Nazis had embraced modern art? 

 

In other words, (i) what would that have meant for the development of German culture during (and after) the Third Reich? and (ii) what would that have meant for the development of modern art and its reception within the rest of the world?  

Unfortunately, whilst it's always amusing to ask such questions, this one doesn't really fly unless you remove Hitler from the scenario. For the Führer's thinking on what constitutes great art - and what constitutes degenerate rubbish - was clear, consistent, and not open to debate. 

 

Hitler despised every innovative and non-representational style of art that had emerged during his lifetime; Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism ... you name it, he hated it - including, as we have seen, German Expressionism, even when produced by a devoted Nazi such as Emil Nolde.

 

So perhaps it's more productive to ask: What was the result of the Nazi rejection of modern art? 

 

Well, as one commentator rightly notes, being banned by the Nazis turned out to have a silver lining: 

 

"'This artwork became more attractive abroad, or certainly in anti-Nazi circles it gained value because the Nazis opposed it, and I think that over the longer run it was good for modern art to be viewed as something that the Nazis detested and hated.'" [5]

 

It's certainly the case that several of the artists featured in the exhibition are now considered among the greats not just of modern art, but within the long history and tradition of Western art. As another art historian writes, the "'stigmatization of modernism caused by the National Socialists is partly responsible for the current boom in modern art [... having] created a canon, so to speak, that had not existed previously.'" [6]  

Further - and crucially - as Peter Schjeldahl points out:

 

"The glamour of martyrdom came to halo modern artists with political virtues that few of them either sought or merited. This set the stage, in Cold War America, for the public acceptance of Abstract Expressionism as, for all its esoteric aesthetics, a potent symbol of liberal democracy [...]" [7]

I conclude, in agreement with Schjeldahl: "Divorcing our thinking about modern culture from the residual consequences of 'Degenerate Art' probably can't be done." [8]  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Joseph Goebbels, quoted by Peter Adam in Art of the Third Reich, (Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1992), p. 56.

 

[2] See the widely distributed pamphlet written by Joseph Goebbels entitled Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler: Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932), in which he attempts to make clear what is meant by National Socialism and why it is, in fact, first and foremost an uncompromising spiritual revolution. 

 

[3] Over 5000 works were initially seized, including 1052 by Nolde, 759 by Heckel, 639 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and 508 by Max Beckmann, as well as smaller numbers of works by such artists as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. It is interesting to note that only six of the 112 artists featured in the Degenerate Art Exhibition were Jewish. 

 

[4] Of course, whilst some came because they realised it would be their last chance to see great works of modern art in Germany, many also came to mock and be scandalised; for when it comes to modern art, public opinion isn't all that different from Hitler's - it's obscene, blasphemous, pretentious, infantile, etc.

 

[5] Jonathan Petropoulos, professor of European History and author of several books on art and politics in the Third Reich, quoted by Lucy Burns in 'Degenerate art: why Hitler hated modernism', on the BBC news website (6 November, 2013): click here.

[6] Ruth Heftig, quoted by Peter Schjeldahl in his essay 'The Anti-Modernists', The New Yorker, (March, 2014): click here to read online.  

[7] Peter Schjeldahl, op. cit. 

[8] Ibid.

To Hold On or Let Go (Reflections on a Garden Gnome)

Festhalten (SA/2022)

 

 

I. 

 

In a sense, much like the figure pictured above, we are all hanging on for dear life to the great flowerpot that is the world we know and love. 

 

And of course, being able to hold on, hold tight, and hold still is crucial at times. But then, equally crucial, is knowing when and how to let go ... 

 

II. 

 

This question is often addressed by poets and playwrights; most famously by Shakespeare in Hamlet (1603) [1]. 

 

Interestingly, D. H. Lawrence chooses to discuss whether to let go or to hold on not only in terms of the individual, but at the level of the species:

 

 

Must we hold on, hold on

and go ahead with what is human nature

and make a new job of the human world?

 

Or can we let it go?

O, can we let it go,

and leave it to some nature that is more than human

to use the sperm of what's worth while in us

and thus eliminate us?

 

Is the time come for humans

now to begin to disappear,

leaving it to the vast revolutions of creative chaos

to bring forth creatures that are an improvement on humans

as the horse was an improvement on the ichthyosaurus?

 

Must we hold on?

Or can we now let go?

 

Or is it even possible we must do both? [2] 

 

 

That's an amusing additional question to end on - one to which I'm not sure I know the answer: perhaps it is possible; perhaps it isn't. 

 

But maybe the best way to confront the blackmail of an either/or is simply to refuse it like Bartleby; i.e., to choose not to choose as a matter of preference; to understand that when faced by a situation that demands we select one option or the other we can always smile say neither/nor, thank you very much [3].     

 

 

III.

 

Philosophers and religious thinkers have also debated whether man's great goal is self-preservation (holding on) or self-abandonment (letting go). 

 

Nietzsche for example, spoke in an early essay of man as a being who clings on the back of a tiger which empowers but also threatens to devour him [4]. 

 

However, he also writes about the need for man to let go - of the past, of God, of friends, etc. - and discover how to forget (a crucial aspect of innocence as Nietzsche understands the latter); don't be a memory-monger, he says, learn, rather, to love fate (i.e., embrace a kind of non-willing and move towards a state of what Heidegger likes to term Gelassenheit - a mixture of serenity, joyful wisdom, and a sense of release) [5].   

 

That, I suppose, is the vital point; letting go is also a letting be, allowing things to sparkle in their own freedom and mystery.         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring, of course, to the the opening line of the soliloquy given by Prince Hamlet in Act 3, Scene 1: "To be, or not to be, that is the question." For earlier refelctions on the verb to be, see the post of 5 August 2022: click here.

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'To let go or to hold on -?', in The Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 372-73. Note that this is not the full poem reproduced here; there are five other stanzas before these closing verses.

[3] Having said that, I'm not a great fan of Herman Melville's figure of Bartleby the Scrivener; see what I write in the post published on 31 January 2013: click here. 

[4] See Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 80. I discuss this idea in a post published on 23 September 2020: click here.

 

[5] Heidegger borrowed the term Gelassenheit from Meister Eckhart and the Christian mystical tradition. He first elaborated the idea in a 1959 work which included two texts: Gelassenheit and Zur Erörterung der Gelassenheit: Aus einem Feldweggespräch über das Denken. An English translation of the latter was first published in 1966 as "Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking". It can now be found as Country Path Conversations, trans. Bret W. Davis, (Indiana University Press, 2010). 

      For a post published on 24 February 2021 in which I discuss the idea of Gelassenheit in relation to the Money Calm Bull: click here.    

 

 

God Save the King ...? The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post (2022)

The ghost of D. H. Lawrence observes a relaxed-looking King Charles III  

 

 

I.

 

And all across the land, the great cry goes up: God Save the King! 

 

The king in this case being Charles III, who has now been formally proclaimed as monarch following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. 

 

But, as every year on this day - 11 September - I always like to stop and ask: What would Lawrence think? 

 

II.

 

As with many other subjects, it's not easy to pin Lawrence down when it comes to the question of monarchy. 

 

On the one hand, he was certainly thrilled to see all the king's soldiers stiffly marching past in their red tunics when enjoying a visit to Hyde Park in the summer of 1909. But that might just be a sign of a penchant for pomp and circumstance, or, indeed, of his homoerotic attraction to virile young men in uniform [1].

 

For when Lawrence actually did see a member of the Royal Family up close and personal - namely, Edward, the Prince of Wales, on a visit to Ceylon in March 1922 - he wasn't particularly impressed. In fact, he seemed far more in awe of the ceremonial elephants and naked devil-dancers, than the pale-faced representative of the British Crown [2].

 

As Lawrence's biographer David Ellis notes, Lawrence characterises the future king, in both his verse and correspondence, with terms and phrases such as sad, nervous, irritable, worn out, forlorn, etc. [3]

 

He is particuarly contemptuous of the Prince's motto, Ich dien, and reasserts an older model of kingship based upon the power of rule over - not service to - the people. And that's really the crucial point; Lawrence doesn't much care for modern forms of constitutional monarchy, he wants kings with dark faces and red beards, and who, like the Sons of Enoch, are hung like horses.

 

In a letter to Mabel Sterne, written in April of 1922, Lawrence states:

 

"I don't believe either in liberty or democracy. I believe in actual, sacred, inspired authority: divine right of natural kings: I believe in the divine right of natural aristocracy, the right, the sacred duty to wield undisputed authority." [4]    

 

He develops this line of thinking in several essays from this period [5], as well as the Epilogue (written in September 1924) to Movements in European History (1921). 

 

Whilst conceding that it is bad to have "greedy, cruel people called 'nobles'" and "rich people squandering money and taking airs" [6], Lawrence argues that, at the same time, we long for those who understand the mysterious responsibility of power, such as the ancient kings; men who were not mere bullies or tyrants and whose kingship was "not a matter of vanity and conceit" [7].      

 

 

III. 

 

So, what then would Lawrence make of King Charles III? 

 

Not much, I suspect. 

 

But, who knows, Charles may at least be able to "keep up a bluff of royalty and nobleness" [8] for a bit longer. And then, after him, le déluge ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Guards!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 34-35. And see also my post on this poem: click here. 

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Elephant', in The Poems Vol. I, pp. 338-343. This poem can also be found online: click here, for example.

[3] See David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930, (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 16.

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mabel Dodge Sterne, 10 April 1922, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 226. 

 

[5] See, for example, the essays 'Blessed Are the Powerful' and 'Aristocracy', both of which can be found in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 261.

 

[7] Ibid., p. 263.    

[8] Ibid., p. 264. 

 

 

For a post published in April of this year in which I discuss Lawrence's reaction to Ceylon, click here. 

 

For another response to presently unfolding royal events in the UK, click here. 

 

Sungazing (With Reference to the Case of Juliet, the Lawrentian Sun-Woman)

Sungazing (SA/2022)

 

"And as she lay, she looked up through her fingers at the central sun

whose outer edges streamed brilliance." 

 

I. 

 

Juliet, the protagonist at the centre of D. H. Lawrence's solar-erotic tale entitled 'Sun', is an embryonic Lady Chatterley; rich, bored, and sexually frustrated. However, instead of taking a conventional lover, she establishes a perverse relationship with the sun, that strangest of strange attractors. 

 

One morning, as Juliet lay masturbating in her bed and gazing intently as the sun "lifted himself molten and sparkling, naked over the sea's rim" [1], she realised that her body belonged to the star around which the earth and all the other planets revolve and that her relationship with the sun mattered far more to her than being a wife and mother [2].

 

Of course, such a relationship - as a form of edgeplay [3] - is dangerous as well as pleasurable. For whilst the sun may kiss us into life, it cares nothing for the personal, the egoic, or the human. In fact, as Juliet discovers, it incinerates these things and if the sun helps her overcome her depression, so also does it burn out her pale-faced American idealism and threaten her status as a modern independent woman.

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Juliet is not the first person to gaze lovingly at the sun and lie naked before him.

 

Indeed, some proponents of New Age philosophies - apparently drawing upon ancient esoteric teachings - explicitly advocate staring at the rising or setting sun for unusually prolonged periods, in order to gain physical and spiritual well-being. 

 

The fact that looking directly at the sun, even for a short time, can cause solar retinopathy and lead to permanent damage or blindness, is not something that seems to cause adherents of sungazing any real concern. They don’t deny such risks, but they do play them down and many assert that, if done with due diligence, sun-gazing can actually improve eyesight [4]. 

 

Indeed, some sun-gazers claim that not only does the practice make you feel happier and healthier, but it can directly increase your energy levels and thus radically reduce the need for food: that one can, as it were, meet one's nutritional requirements directly from sunlight, just like a plant. 

 

Again, the fact that people don't possess chlorophyll and so cannot photosynthesise is discreetly overlooked and, as with other forms of inedia, there is no credible scientific evidence to support this amusingly bonkers claim [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 20. 

 

[2] Cf. Lawrence's poem 'Sun-women' where he writes of women who belong neither to men nor their children - nor even to themselves - but to the sun. The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 456. 

      Admittedly, Lawrence doesn't  explicitly say tha Juliet is masturbating in bed before the sun. However, the following lines undeniably suggest a state of heightened sexual arousal:

      

"It was as if she had never seen the sun rise before. She had never seen the naked sun stand up pure upon the sea-line, shaking the night off himself, like wetness. And he was full and naked. And she wanted to come to him. 

      So the desire sprang secretly in her, to be naked to the sun. She chesished her desire like a secret. She wanted to come together with the sun." 

 

[3] Edgeplay is a term derived from the kinky world of BDSM and refers to any form of sexual activity that involves the risk of physical harm to participants. Sun-fucking, at the very least, might result in a bad case of sunburn (which in turn could lead to skin cancer) and sungazing very obviously risks blindness, although, for Juliet, her (temporary) sun-blindness is like a richness to her.   

 

[4] I’m thinking here of the so-called Bates Method, a form of alternative eye-care developed by William Bates (1860-1931), who counted the visually-impaired Aldous Huxley amongst his famous followers.

[5] As the editors of the page devoted to sungazing on RationalWiki point out, the best that the sun can do when it comes to providing nourishment is stimulate production of vitamin D. However, as this happens in the skin - the sun's ultraviolet rays interacting with a protein known as 7-DHC - you still don't need to purposely stare at the sun.  

 

 

This post is a revised extract from an essay entitled 'Sun-Fucked: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence' (2012), which was published as 'Sun-Struck' on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage blog in January 2019: click here. 

Readers can find another extract from the above essay posted on Torpedo the Ark by clicking here. 

Liz Truss and Boris Johnson: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

 

Liz Truss promises to ride out the storm,

whilst Boris Johnson says he'll return to his plough. 

 

 

I. 

 

There was nothing new or interesting in Liz Truss's Downing Street speech as she began her tenure as British PM yesterday: it was the usual predictable bullshit from someone who doesn't seem to be aware that she has actually been a part of the UK government that has got us in the present mess [1].

 

It wasn't a virus that wrecked the economy - it was the profoundly stupid political response to such. Similarly, the energy crisis is not something that can simply be blamed on Russia [2]. And one might wonder why, if the British people are so full of courage and aspiring to national greatness, they repeatedly return to office such piss-poor and cowardly politicians?

 

Truss may want to ride out the storm, but some of us are rather hoping that it blows a gaping hole in the ideals, conventions, and fixed forms that we erect like a huge umbrella between ourselves and the forever surging chaos of existence.  

 

 

II. 

Of course, Truss wasn't the only one making a short speech yeserday in front of 10 Downing Street: the outgoing PM, Boris Johnson, also found time to offer us a few final thoughts. And, to be honest, I found what he had to say far more stimulating. 

 

Critics might say the speech only provided further proof of the fact that Johnson's an arrogant liar and narcissist, still in denial about his own spectacular fall from power, but at least he managed to squeeze in a reference to the Roman statesman and military leader Cincinnatus (c.519 - c. 430 BC), and I always appreciate signs of a Classical education. 

 

However, it's highly debatable whether Johnson's self-comparison with Cincinnatus holds good; for whilst the latter was renown for his civic virtue, modesty, and outstanding leadership; the former will probably be remembered for Partygate, golden wall paper and an obsession with net zero. 

 

That said, like Cincinnatus, one suspects that Johnson has little time for those he regards as plebs [3] and that he (not so) secretly dreams of one day returning to power. 

 

Ultimately, the state of British politics is deeply depressing: one rather wishes that Larry the Cat could be Prime Minister; a reassuring feline presence and someone who seems to know what he's doing ... [4]

 

 

 

      

 

Notes

 

[1] Truss has been the Member of Parliament for South West Norfolk since 2010 and has held various Cabinet posts under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, including Environment Secretary (2014-16), International Trade Secretary (2019-21), and Foreign Secretay (2021-22), so is absolutely complicit in the fact that we are now where we are as a country.

 

[2] The fact that the UK isn't more energy self-sufficient - and has inadequate energy reserves - is not Vladimir Putin's fault.

 

[3] Cincinnatus opposed the rights of the common citizens and when his son, Caseo Quinctius, was put on trial for violently preventing the tribune of the people from meeting in the Forum, he begged that his son be shown leniency. 

 

[4] Larry - who holds the title of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office - has been the most loved and most trusted member of the present government for the last decade; by far the best appointment made by David Cameron during his time as PM.  

 

 

Michel Houellebecq and Nellie Mackay on the Question of Cloning

 

Singer and songwriter Nellie Mackay 

Poet and novelist Michel Houellebecq 

 

"My oh my, walkin' by 

Who's the apple of my eye?

Why, it's my very own 

Clonie!"

 

I. 

 

Whatever else he might be, Michel Houellebecq is no narcissist: 

 

"I don't love myself. I have little liking for myself, and even less self-esteem; besides, I'm not very interested in myself." [a]

 

It's somewhat surprising, therefore, that he has never regretted being the father of a son whom he loves, and loves more each time he sees in him traits of his own character "manifesting themselves over time, with relentless determinism" [109]. 

 

This repetition  - even of flaws - is a source of profound joy. 

 

On the other hand, however, Houellebecq confesses to be saddened when his son displays the signs of an autonomous personality, in which he doesn't recognise anything of himself. 

 

Far from marvelling at this filial otherness, Houellebecq is forced to realise that a child is only a piss-poor copy or incomplete and weakened replica of himself; one that briefly reminds him of death, from which, he says, he has nothing to gain. 

 

The expression of such feelings is not encouraged in modern philosophy; "these feelings leave no room for progress, for freedom, for individuation, for becoming; they aim at nothing other than the eternal, at the stupid repetition of the same" [110] and are ultimately "nothing other than the ever-active memory of an overwhelming biological instinct" [110].    

 

Not wanting to die - and disappointed by the fact that a child is a far from perfect copy - Houellebecq dreams of the day when he can get himself cloned:

 

"I'll pay whatever price it takes (neither moral imperatives nor financial imperatives have ever weighed heavily against those of reproduction). I'll probably have two or three clones [...] Through my clones, I will have achieved some form of survival - not quite sufficient, but greater than what children would have given me." [110-111]

 

Houellebecq's only concern relates to the fact that the clones will be produced in a jar; it saddens him to think that they'll not be conceived in the old-fashioned manner (via sexual intercourse) and born of a womb: 

 

"Will my little ones, born so far away from the pussy, still have any taste for pussy? I hope so for them, I hope so with all my heart." [111] 

 

But he concedes this is simply nostalgia getting the better of him ...

 

 

II. 

 

Someone else who imagines a time to come in which we'll be able to admire and befriend our own clones, is the brilliant singer-songwriter Nellie Mackay ...

 

In a comic (semi-serious?) track entitled 'Clonie' [b], MacKay tells the tale of a wealthy but lonely and infertile woman who doesn't care what other people might think about shallow gene pools and the ethical issues raised by human cloning. 

 

Bored rich folk like her don't need to conceive a child naturally; they can have a fully-formed clone produced to order with whom they'll be able to share their lives and stroll the 'hood, side-by-side and hand-in-hand.  

 

III.

Of course, one is reminded when reading Houellebecq or listening to Nellie Mackay, of Jean Baudrillard's work in this area ...

Baudrillard thought of cloning as the extermination of sex and death and the return of humanity to an amoeba-like state of non-individuated being prior to our becoming mortal and discontinuous; what he refers to as the final solution.  

 

In a crucial passage, Baudrillard writes: 

 

"Contrary to everything we ordinarily believe, nature first created immortal beings, and it was only by winning the battle for death that we became the living beings that we are. Blindly, we dream of defeating death and achieving immortality, whereas that is our most tragic destiny, a destiny inscribed in the previous life of our cells." [c] 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Michel Houellebecq, 'Technical Consolation', in Interventions 2020, trans. Andrew Brown, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 109. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[b] Nellie Mackay, 'Clonie', on the astonishing debut studio album Get Away From Me, (Columbia Records, 2004): click here. And for a live version recorded at a TED Talk in 2008, click here.

[c] Jean Baudrillard, 'The Final Solution, or The Revenge of the Immortals', in Impossible Exchange, trans. Chris Turner, (Verso, 2001), pp. 27-8. Long time readers (with good memories) may recall that I discuss this passage and Baudrillard's thoughts on cloning in a post published back in April 2013: click here. 

      It is interesting - and disappointing - to note that Houellebecq has little or no time for Baudrillard.

 

 

Notes on the False Black Widow (In Praise of Spiders)

A female false widow spider 

(SA/2022)

 

 

I'm not an arachnologist, but I think that the creature pictured above that I discovered hiding in the bottom of a garden waste sack, is commonly known as a cupboard spider or, more intriguingly, a false widow spider, due to a superficial resemblance to its more venomous and darker cousin. 

 

Like black widows, the female cupboard spider is usually around a centimetre in length and has a round, bulbous abdomen that is typically reddish-bown in colour (like a conker), with distinctive markings. 

 

Providing they have access to water, they can go several months without feeding and live up to six years, laying three or more egg sacs annually, each containing between 40-100 eggs from which tiny but fully independent spiderlings will usually emerge within a month. 

 

A cosmopolitan spider, i.e., one found in many parts of the world, the species known as Steatoda nobilis is thought to have  arrived in the UK relatively recently; as a stowaway on ships transporting bananas from tropical lands. 

 

Now, however, thanks to a warming climate, numbers are booming and reports of people being bitten by these spiders - painful, but not deadly and with no long-lasting effects - are often found in the newspapers, written in predictably sensational style: 

 

Traumatised mum warns other parents to be alert after her baby was bitten multiple times by an invasive arachnid 250 times more poisonous than native species... 

 

Such reports often fail to note that the spiders are not aggressive and generally don't bite people unless provoked to react in a defensive manner. 

 

So, my advice is, should you come across such a lovely spider, leave it alone and learn to live in wonder, like a philosopher, rather than in fear or contempt for these marvels of evolution which have been around for hundreds of millions of years before us and will probably still be spinning webs long after humanity has vanished from the face of the earth.       

   

Two legs good, eight legs better ... 

Not All Sex Kittens are Catty ...

 

Cover of the French magazine  

Noir et Blanc (12 June 1959)

 

 

Despite the best efforts of the press in the 1950s to create a rivalry between the Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and her younger French counterpart Brigitte Bardot, the two - very different [1] - women never came to blows or traded insults.

 

In fact, following their only meeting - in the ladies’ dressing room of the Odeon Leicester Square, for a royal film premier on 29 October, 1956, at which both Bardot and Monroe were formally introduced to the Queen [2] - the former, still only 22, was clearly a little star-struck by the latter, then in her prime. 

 

Many years later, writing in her 1996 autobiography, Bardot confessed that she simply stared at Marilyn, too nervous to speak, other than to shyly say hello: "I found her sublime. She was always for me what every woman, not only me, must dream to be. She was gorgeous, charming, fragile."     

 

She goes on to add: 

 

"I have a lot of things in common with Marilyn and she is very dear to my heart. Both of us had childish souls despite our starlet bodies, an intense sensitivity that can't be hidden, a great need to be protected, a naïveté!" [3]

 

Which really just goes to show that not all sex kittens are catty ...

 

Interestingly, however, a third screen goddess was also present at the royal film performance in 1956; namely, the Swedish actress Anita Ekberg. 

 

As with Bardot, this was the only time that Ekberg's path crossed with that of Marilyn, about whom she once commented in a 1999 Arena documentary on the BBC: "I think she's a good actress: you can't play stupid unless you're very intelligent", which I suppose is a compliment. 

 

But in the same televised interview, Ekberg denies that Bardot was beautiful, insisting she was simply "very pretty [...] like a Barbie doll." [4] 

 

Which shows that some sex kittens are catty after all ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Monroe, born in LA in 1926, spent much of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages, before becoming a factory worker; Bardot, on the other hand, was from a solidly middle class Parisian background and trained to become a ballerina. At fifteen, Bardot was invited to pose for the cover of Elle, whilst Marilyn was appearing as a nude pin-up model in rather less respectable magazines. 

      However, both women went on to achieve global fame as movie stars and both, interestingly enough, caught the attention of intellectuals; Monroe married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 and Bardot was described by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1959 essay The Lolita Syndrome as the most liberated woman in post-War France.  

 

[2] The film being premiered was The Battle of the River Plate (1956), a British war film by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, and Peter Finch.     

 

[3] Brigitte Bardot, Initiales B. B.: mémoires, (Grasset, 1996). 

      Note that I'm relying on an anonymous English translation of these lines, so can't vouch for its accuracy. However, I have no reason to doubt such and Bardot makes clear her admiration and affection for Marilyn in an interview posted on YouTube: click here. 

 

[4] To watch the clip from this Arena documentary, directed by Nicola Roberts, in which Ekberg comments on Marilyn Monroe, click here. To watch the clip in which she comments on Brigitte Bardot, click here. 

  

Lord Moulton: Law and [the Reformation of] Manners

Caricature of Lord Moulton 

Vanity Fair (4 Oct. 1900)

 

"The great principle of Obedience to the Unenforceable is no mere ideal, 

but in some form or other it is strong in the hearts of all except the most depraved."

 

 

I. 

 

Another key figure associated with the reformation of manners is the one time Cambridge Apostle, John Fletcher Moulton - or Lord Moulton, as he was known by most people. 

 

A brilliant mathematician, Moulton was also a top London barrister, a Fellow of the Royal Society, first chairman of the Medical Research Council, and a Liberal MP. He was even awarded (amongst many other things) the French Legion of Honour for helping to establish an international unit for measuring electricity and regarded (alongside his correspondent Charles Darwin) to be one of the most intelligent men in England.  

 

During the Great War, Moulton served as chairman of a committee to advise on the supply of explosives, eventually becoming Director General of the Explosives Department. He did have qualms about the use of poison gases, however, believing them to be weapons that lay outside the bounds of civilised warfare.

 

After the War, Moulton returned to what was always his passion: the law. He died in 1921, aged 76. But he was destined to live posthumously due to publication in the July 1924 issue of The Atlantic of an impromptu speech entitled 'Law and Manners', which he had made to the Authors' Club a few years prior to his death ...

 

II.

 

In the speech, Moulton divided human action into three domains. First is the domain of Positive Law, "where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us which must be obeyed". Second is the domain of Free Choice, "which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom" [1]. 

 

Between these two extremes, however, lies a third, much wider domain in which our actions are not determined by law, but in which we are not absolutely free to behave in any way we choose either. It's this domain - which Moulton calls the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable - wherein the question of manners is most crucial. 

 

In this domain of manners, man voluntarily obeys those rules of conduct which cannot be enforced by any external power. In other words, the individual is left to make his or her own ethical decisions and is not subject to any categorical imperative. It's the land that those who would impose a universal system of morality hate the most. 

 

Moulton says: 

"This country which lies between Law and Free Choice I always think of as the domain of Manners. To me, Manners in this broad sense signifies the doing that which you should do although you are not obliged to do it. I do not wish to call it Duty, for that is too narrow to describe it, nor would I call it Morals for the same reason. It might include both, but it extends beyond them. It covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself." 

 

Obviously, there are some who think the domain of law should be prioritised and they would seek to regulate and control every aspect of daily lives; we saw this during the covid pandemic when there were those who openly delighted in lockdowns and mandates. Others, perhaps of a more libertarian bent but often just as fanatic, think the domain of freedom should be radically extended and the state (including the criminal justice system) dissolved.

 

But I suspect that Moulton is right to insist that all three domains are "essential to the properly organized life of the individual, and one must be on one's guard against thinking that any of them can safely be encroached upon" (although, having conceded that, he and I would probably not agree as to what constitutes the properly organized life of the individual - not a phrase that I would in fact ever use). 

 

Personally, its the domain of manners that interests most - for it seems to me this is the land of culture wherein the individual is best able to give style to their existence. As Moulton says, the greatness of a people is probably best judged not by how many (or how harsh) its laws are - nor, on the other hand, by how far the ideal of freedom is extended - but by how they operate within the domain of manners:     

 

"Mere obedience to Law does not measure the greatness of a Nation. It can easily be obtained by a strong executive, and most easily of all from a timorous people. Nor is the licence of behavior which so often accompanies the absence of Law, and which is miscalled Liberty, a proof of greatness. The true test is the extent to which the individuals composing the nation can be trusted to obey self-imposed law."

 

In other words, how well such individuals understand the singular importance of developing techniques of the self and/or an art of existence if they wish to give style to their lives. Ultimately, those philosophers who do their thinking on the catwalk and those who call for a reformation of manners, are on the same side in the war against stupidity, ugliness, and all forms of tyranny (including those masquerading as political correctness and social justice).         

 

Anyway, let's give the last word to his lordship:

 

"Now I can tell you why I chose the title 'Law and Manners.' It must be evident to you that Manners must include all things which a man should impose upon himself, from duty to good taste. I have borne in mind the great motto of William of Wykeham - Manners makyth Man. It is in this sense - loyalty to the rule of Obedience to the Unenforceable, throughout the whole realm of personal action - that we should use the word 'Manners' if we would truly say that 'Manners makyth Man'."

 

 

Note: All lines quoted are from 'Law and Manners, by the Rt. Hon. Lord Moulton, in The Atlantic, (July, 1924), which can be found online as a pdf by those who are interested. 

 

Two other recent posts on the reformation of manners can be easily accessed by clicking here and here. The first adopts a Nietzschean perspective on this question; the second argues in agreement with Lord Chesterfield that it's no laughing matter.