In Memory of Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson as Gudrun Brangwen in Women in Love (1969) 

and as Cleopatra in The Morecambe and Wise Show (1971)

 

 

I. 

 

I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of the actress Glenda Jackson [1], who died a few days ago, aged 87. But I do remember with a certain degree of fondness her appearances on the Morecambe & Wise Show - particularly the cod-classical Cleopatra sketch, in which she delivered the immortal line: "All men are fools and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got." [2]

 

And, of course, I also admire her Academy Award winning performance as Gudrun, in Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969) [3]. The critic Brian McFarlane was spot on to describe Jackson's "blazing intelligence, sexual challenge and abrasiveness" [4] in the superbly written role; I think even Lawrence might have been impressed by her fearlessness.  

 

 

II. 

 

Born, in 1936, into a solidly working-class family from Birkenhead, Glenda was named after the wise-cracking Hollywood blonde Glenda Farrell. 

 

A politically-conscious and talented teenager, Miss Jackson won a scholarship to study at RADA in 1954. 

 

Prior to this, she spent two years working at Boots, which she hated; as she did the series of soul-destroying jobs she was obliged to take whilst unable to land roles in the early years of her acting career [5].

 

Fortunately, fame, fortune, and critical success were just around the corner and Jackson became a huge star of stage and screen in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

 

However, she decided to quit acting in 1991, in order to devote herself to politics full-time as the Labour Party candidate for Hampstead and Highgate. 

 

Entering Parliament the following year, Jackson declared her determination to do anything legal to oppose the Tory government, still led at this time by Margaret Thatcher, whom she despised. 

 

(As a staunch republican, she wasn't a great supporter of the British monarchy either.)

 

In 2015, having retired from politics, Jackson returned to her first love; even treating us to a magnificent (gender-transcending) interpretation of King Lear, in Deborah Warner's 2016 production at the Old Vic: 

 

 

 Photo: Tristram Kenton (2016)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] As lengthy obituaries for Jackson have (rightly) appeared in every major news publication, I'm not going to recap her life and career in detail here. Primarily, I wanted simply to remind readers of her roles as Cleopatra and Gudrun Brangwen. However, I will add a few biographical details in part two of this post discussing her later years.    

 

[2] See The Morecambe & Wise Show (S5/E5), dir. John Ammonds, written by Eddie Braben, which aired on 3 June, 1971. Click here to watch the lengthy (14:32) Cleopatra sketch on the Facebook page Classic TV Moments. The line quoted begins at 5:57.  

 

[3] Interestingly, Jackson was pregnant whilst filming Women in Love - though I'm not sure if this fact helped, hindered, or made no difference to her astonishing performance. 

      Click here to watch the famous scene in which Jackson - as Gudrun - dances in front some (bemused and increasingly agitated) Highland cattle, whilst her sister Ursula (played by Jennie Linden) watches on fightened of what might the beasts might do. Eventually, Gerald Crich (Oliver Reid) arrives to put a stop to her fun and games, demanding to know why she wished to drive his cattle mad.

 

[4] Brian McFarlane (ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film, (Methuen / BFI, 2003), p. 339.

 

[5] These jobs included: waitress in a coffee shop; receptionist for a theatrical agent; and a shop assistant at British Home Stores. Being a woman with an artistic temperament from a traditional working class background, surely helped Jackson in the role of Gudrun.   

 

 

Poor Little Jimmy (All He Wanted to Do Was Be a Sex Pistol)

The Sham Pistols: Jimmy Pursey, Steve Jones, Dave Treganna, and Paul Cook

Photo by Paul Slattery (July 1979)

 

 

James Timothy Pursey - or Jimmy Pursey as he likes to be known - is the founder and frontman of British punk band Sham 69. 

 

Although initially inspired by the Ramones, Jimmy always wanted to be a Clash City Rocker; he even dreamed of one day becoming a Sex Pistol ...

 

For despite the fact that Sham 69 were one of the most commercially successful punk groups - achieving five Top 20 singles and making regular appearances on Top of the Pops - Jimmy lacked that one thing he truly desired - credibility and the respect of his punk superiors.     

 

Thus, imagine his joy when, on 30 April 1978, Jimmy was invited on stage at Victoria Park in East London, to perform alongside Joe and Mick, belting out 'White Riot' in his own inimitable mockney style, in front of a 100,000 people: click here.

 

And imagine his still greater excitement when, the following year, having kicked Rotten out of their band, Steve Jones and Paul Cook invited Jimmy to become the new voice and face of the Sex Pistols - or, more precisely, the Sham Pistols as they were (possibly) going to be known.

 

Alas, it wasn't to be ... 

 

For although Cook and Jones found Jimmy amiable enough at first and things seemed to be progressing well in the studio - in July 1979, the singer informed the NME they had recorded 10 songs and would be ready to tour by September that year - Sham 69 were still contractually bound to Polydor whilst Cook and Jones were signed to Virgin.

 

Apart from this legal issue, relations were also beginning to sour on a personal level between Jimmy and the two former Sex Pistols, coming to a head on 19 August, when the latter walked out of a recording session and Jones hilariously declared: It's worse than working with Rotten.

 

Elaborating in an interview at the time, Jones described how an overly emotional Jimmy kept crying and stuff like that. Worse, he and Cook had come to the conclusion that although Jimmy could talk the talk, when push came to shove, he couldn't walk the walk: All he wanted to do was be a Sex Pistol.   

 

Recalling events in his autobiography, almost 40 years later, Jones writes: 

 

"When me and Cookie gave Jimmy a try, it was never going to be the Sex Pistols in our minds, we always thought of it as a new group. The odd thing about it was that we liked him, but when we got together to try and write some songs in a studio out in the country, he couldn't fucking come up with anything. His cover was blown - he didn't have the talents or intelligence that Rotten did, nowhere near". 

- Steve Jones, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol (Windmill Books, 2017), p. 221.

 

After the dissolution of the embryonic new band, Cook and Jones went on to form The Professionals and poor little Jimmy moved on to solo projects, later reforming Sham 69, with whom he still performs today, aged 68. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Natural Born Killer', a track by the Sham Pistols recorded in June 1979 (later reworked with new lyrics by Cook and Jones as 'Kick Down the Doors'): click here. 

 

Thanks to Sophie S. for her help fact checking this post. 

 

For a related post to this one, on Johnny Rotten Vs Jimmy Pursey, click here.

 

 

Claude Lalanne, Serge Gainsbourg, and the Man with the Cabbage Head

 

Claude Lalanne's L'Homme à tête de chou, as featured on 

the cover of  Serge Gainsbourg's 1976 album of the same title 

 

 

Claude Lalanne was an avant-garde French sculptor and designer, who often worked in collaboration with her husband, François-Xavier Lalanne, even though they had distinctively different styles and ideas.

 

Inspired by a whimsical mix of Surrealism, Art Nouveau, and her love of plants, Claude Lalanne produced some astonishing pieces (including items of furniture and jewellery) and her hybrid (often bizarre) style of decorative design has captured the imagination of many in the art world, as well as leading fashion designers including Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, and Yves Saint Laurent, the latter of whom commissioned Lalanne to create several mirrors adorned with electroplated leaves and branches [1]

 

In fact, for anyone who wanted an apple with lips, a rabbit with wings, or a man with a cabbage head, Lalanne was the go-to artist; Salvador Dalí once asked her to make him some cutlery and Serge Gainsbourg famously acquired her piece entitled L’homme à tête de chou, featuring it on the sleeve of his 1976 album of the same title [2], thereby bringing her work to the attention of a new and wider audience. 

 

Amusingly, Lalanne also made a whole series of chicken-legged cabbage sculptures which she called choupattes - a series she added to (with the assistance of her daughter and granddaughter) right up to her death, aged 93, in 2019. 

 

 

Claude Lalanne: Choupatte (2014 / 2017)

Bronze (57.5 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm)

Ben Brown Fine Arts

  

 

Notes

 

[1] After his death in 2008, Yves Saint-Laurent's fifteen Lalanne designed mirrors fetched more than $2m at auction. 

      It might also be noted that Lalanne collaborated with the designer on his 1969 Empreintes collection, for which she made bronze breastplates cast from the chest of his favourite model. It was Saint-Laurent's only collaboration with an artist. 

 

[2] Although not as celebrated as Histoire de Melody Nelson (Philips Records, 1971) - considered by many to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished work - L'Homme à tête de chou (Philips Records, 1976) does have its moments and dark delights. It tells the story of a middle-aged man obsessively in love with a young and free-spirited shampoo girl, Marilou. Driven mad by jealousy and desire, he eventually murders her with a fire extinguisher, concealing her body beneath the foam. Unsurprisingly, he ends his days in an inane asylum.

      Claude Lalanne's sculpture, owned by Gainsbourg, is pictured on the front sleeve of the album sitting in the courtyard of his house in Paris (5 bis Rue De Verneuil). Click here to listen to the title track of L'Homme à tête de chou uploaded to YouTube by Universal Music Group.    

 

 

On Unity, Diversity and Unity in Diversity

"Our ability to achieve perfect unity in diversity 

will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation." [1]

 

  

I. 

 

Whilst I wouldn't quite define myself as a cockney cowboy, nevertheless, like Jimmy Pursey, I grew up in a time and place in which solidarity was a value the working class prided themselves on and the idea of strength through unity was an unquestionable truth on both the left and right of the political spectrum [2]. 

 

If the kids - or the workers of the world, or the German people - were only united, then they'd never be divided and all would come good; unity not only making strong, but happy in a state of harmony and wholeness. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, such idealism is highly suspect; a dangerous utopian (and authoritarian) fantasy. From an early age, I was always more excited by conflict and controversy rather than seeking consensus; difference and diversity, not uniformity. That's why the McLarenesque model of anarchy promoted by the Sex Pistols appealed more than the progressive politics of punk social workers, the Clash.

 

However, these days I roll my eyes to heaven whenever I hear the word diversity; particularly when it's tied to equity and inclusion and falls from the mouth of someone who ultimately desires unity in diversity - i.e., a form of dialectical synthesis in which diverse characteristics are finally unified (and utilised) in some higher goal or purpose.  

 

Like many other terms that were once part of a radical vocabulary - otherness, queerness, and even the prefix trans - diversity has been co-opted by woke humanists espousing multiculturalism and waving rainbow flags, whilst all the time working to create a global citizenship, who belong to One World (and One World Order). 

 

In other words, its the same old moral monomania or idée fixe: humanity united in Peace and Love. 

 

Personally, I'd rather witness a "vivid recoil into separateness" [3] and singular being; for I hate the attempt to deny the starry uniqueness of the individual in the name of false diversity.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Quote attributed to the holy fool and hypocrite Mahatma Gandhi.

 

[2] This idea - beloved of fascists and communists alike - originally derived from an ancient Greek motto attributed to Homer: ισχύς εν τη ενώσει (power lies in unity).  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Future States', The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 526. For Lawrence, this recoil will mark the end of universalism and cosmopolitanism.

 

 

Readers interested in what Nietzsche has to say on the topic of diversity should see the post of 21 July 2018: click here. 

Reflections on a Photo of a Horse's Head - A Guest Post by Louise Mason

Horsehead (SA/2023)

 

 

Horses' heads vary hugely in their size, shape, and character, which partly explains why they have long fascinated artists ...

 

One thinks, for example, of the carved marble horse head by the Ancient Greek sculptor Pheidias; ears flattened, jaw gaping, nostrils flaring, eyes bulging, it's both beautiful and terrifying  at the same time. Believed to date to around 438-432 BC, it's said to be one of the noble nags that drew the chariot of the moon goddess Selene [1]. 

 

One thinks also of the far more recent work by Nic Fiddian-Green; a giant bronze sculpture of a horse's head entitled Still Water (2011). Located amidst the endless noise and movement of traffic in central London, it provides a pleasing contrast in its stillness and silence [2]. 

 

But, looking at the powerful image above by Stephen Alexander, primarily makes me think of the serpentine aspect of horses when they lower their "strangely naked equine heads" [3], press their ears back, and extend their long, muscular necks, moving the latter from side-to-side in an aggressive gesture known as snaking [4].

Notes

 

[1] Part of the Elgin Marbles, this sculpture - commonly known as the Selene Horse - can be found in the British Museum: click here for details.

 

[2] This free-standing work is 33ft high and weighs in at an impressive 20 tonnes. Originally installed at Marble Arch in 2011, it was relocated to Achille’s Way, near Hyde Park Corner, in May 2021. Fiddian-Green, is a British sculptor who specialises in making lifelike horses' heads, having been inspired whilst a student at Chelsea College of Arts by the Selene Horse. Click here to visit his website.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, St. Mawr, in St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Bran Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 35. 

 

[4] Snaking is a common form of herding behavior, primarily displayed by stallions in the wild, keen to assert their dominance over mares. However, it has also been observed in domesticated horses, including geldings (castrated stallions).

 

  

Why Bambi is Forever Being Killed in My Imagination Thanks to the Sex Pistols

My photo of a local fawn and a poster for the Sex Pistols'

film soundtrack The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979)

 

Some readers may recall a post from last year in which I attempted to illustrate Oscar Wilde's anti-mimetic contention that life imitates art, with reference to a moth's wing which appeared to incorporate the Cambridge Rapist motif used by Jamie Reid in his work for the Sex Pistols [1]. 

 

But as someone pointed out at the time, seeing a human face - even, as in this instance, a masked human face - in an object of any variety (be it natural or artificial, animate or inanimate) is a common psychological phenomenon [2], which tells us something interesting about how the brain works, but doesn't really lend support to Wilde's theory. 

 

And that's fair enough, I suppose. 

 

Thus, maybe what the above post primarily indicates is that my personal obsession with the Sex Pistols is such that I often view the world through a punk prism. Take, for example, what happened the other day when walking past the deer herd who have colonised what was once a local playing field ...

 

Seeing the little deer pictured above, immediately triggered thoughts of the shocking image of a dead fawn used to promote the Sex Pistols' film (and film soundtrack) The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle [3]. This, in turn, made me start to sing the chorus from the curious track by Eddie Tenpole: 'Who Killed Bambi?' [4]. 

 

I can't remember who said it, but it seems to be true; the songs we loved at sixteen, we'll remember and continue to love for the rest of our lives (even those that have become almost unlistenable).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post dated 13 July 2022 and entitled 'Punk Moth (Or How the Cambridge Rapist Motif Haunts the Natural World)': click here.

 

[2] Once considered a symptom of psychosis, pareidolia, as it's known, is now understood to be hardwired into every brain by evolution; we all attempt to impose a meaningful interpretation on the world and to recognise ourselves in things and patterns of light and shade. See the post dated 4 June 2015 and entitled 'Pareidolia and Prosopagnosia': click here.

 

[3] Readers who share my obsession with the Sex Pistols will be aware that Who Killed Bambi? was originally the title of a film featuring the band, due to be released in 1978, directed by Russ Meyer from a script by Roger Ebert and Malcolm McLaren. After this project was abandoned, McLaren eventually made The Great Rock and Roll Swindle with director Julien Temple, the trailer for which included the title shot of a deer being killed, a scene that was not included in the finished film. A song, however, with the title 'Who Killed Bambi?' did feature in the movie, sung by Eddie Tenpole (see note 4 below). Additional footage from Who Killed Bambi? was also used in Temple's documentary on the Sex Pistols, The Filth and the Fury (2000). 

[4] Click here for the album version of the song and here to see Tenpole (or Tadpole, as Irene Handl amusingly calls him) performing the track in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle film. I have written about 'Who Killed Bambi?' previously on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

Notes from a Drama Workshop ...

Poet and playwright Síomón Solomon 

 discussing his audio drama Hölderlin's Poltergeists 

at Queen Mary University of London (9 June 2023)

  

I.

 

Whilst attending a table read of selected scenes from Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2021) [1], I was struck by the idea that madness often manifests itself as the hearing of multiple voices, whereas, on the other hand, sane individuals are those who listen faithfully (and in compliance) to the voice of reason (or, as it is sometimes referred to, common sense). 

 

In other words, we might define insanity as a form of disobedience, i.e., an inability (or refusal) to turn towards (and heed) the sound of a unified voice (be it of man or God) which speaks the Truth (as an expression of moral logic), and sanity as a form logocentricity. 

 

This perhaps helps to explain why certain philosophers and artists are fascinated by madness and write in favour of polyvocality, straining their ears to hear multiple voices whispering in many alien tongues, where others like to discern but one voice speaking clearly in a comprehensible manner.       

 

 

II.

 

Academics interested in the history (or, perhaps better to say, histories) of mental ill-health are also keen these days to "place the voices of previously silent, marginalised and disenfranchised individuals at the heart of their analyses" [2] - to let the mad speak for themselves, as it were, and celebrate neurodiversity as just another form of queerness. 

 

Whether this is as productive (and as radical) as some believe, I don't know ...

 

For whilst I'm quite happy to reflect on strangeness and listen to psychotic voices - even to the howling of wolves, or the loud rumble of thunder - in order to grasp something of a reality that isn't exclusively defined by human reason, I'm not sure we can (or should) re-imagine our own identities on the delusions of a mad poet calling himself Scardanelli ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written several posts on Síomón Solomon's astonishing drama for voices, a work that is not merely a translation from the German of Stephan Hermlin's radio play, Scardanelli, but an extended remix. Click here to read a selection of such. 

      The table read took place at Queen Mary University of London, in Mile End, as part of a two-day arts and mental health event on the theme of queering boundaries: click here for details.  

 

[2] Those who are interested in this might like to take a look at Voices in the History of Madness, a collection of interdisciplinary essays ed. Robert Ellis, Sarah Kendal, and Steven J. Taylor, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). I quote here from the introduction to this work. 

      I would also encourage readers to check out the following article by Allan Beveridge, 'Voices of the mad: patients' letters from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 1873-1908', in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 27, Issue 4, (Cambridge University Press, July 1997), pp. 899-908. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329179700490X 

On Dis/Obedience

Portrait of le poète maudit Síomón Solomon

Stephen Alexander (2023) [1]

 

 

According to the Satanist Simon Solomon, at the root of all human sin lies a refusal to listen to the Word of God. This, essentially, is the meaning of disobedience; the turning of a deaf ear to the Holy Spirit. 

 

And, of course, as a natural born anarchist and self-styled anti-Christ, I'm instinctively disobedient; neither wishing to comply with nor conform to any external authority. Like Nietzsche, I fear that those who are too weak to command themselves and lay down their own law, will ultimately submit to tyranny and come to desire their own oppression (i.e., that a culture of obedience breeds fascism).

 

However, Nietzsche also says that the only thing which makes life worth living is the giving of obedience for a prolonged period in a single direction; that obedience is the essential thing in heaven and earth and the rebellious refusal to obey is merely the sign of a slave. 

 

And, as the cultural commentator James Walker reminds us, D. H. Lawrence also encourages his readers to obey the promptings of their own souls - not so much the voice of God within, but their own genius or demon: "Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice ..." [2], not living in frictional opposition to such. 

 

This passage from his 1923 novel Kangaroo is perhaps the most memorable statement Lawrence makes on the joy of obedience

 

"If a man loves life, and feels the sacredness and mystery of life, then he knows that life is full of strange and subtle and even conflicting imperatives. And a wise man learns to recognize the imperatives as they arise [...] and to obey. But most men bruise themselves to death trying to fight and overcome their own, new, life-born needs, life's ever strange imperatives. The secret of all life is obedience: obedience to the urge that arises in the soul, the urge that is life itself, urging us to new gestures, new embraces, new emotions, new combinations, new creations." [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This portrait - the first in the Simon Solomon Says ... series - is, in part, inspired by Shepard Fairey's phenomenal - and, apparently, phenomenological - Obey Giant project, which transformed from a sticker campaign to a successful clothing line. Click here to visit the official website.  

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 17.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 112.  

 

 

In the Bullring With Simon & Simone

André Masson: Bullfighting (1937)

 

 

I. 

 

In response to a recent post [1], the Irish poet and playwright Síomón Solomon asks:

 

"I wonder how you square your squeamishness and selective sentimentality when it comes to bursten bowels and the suffering of animals, with your professed admiration for Bataille's Histoire de l'Oeil - a work which powerfully illustrates the (Nietzschean) idea that, in saying Yes to life in all circumstances and under any conditions, one must ultimately give even the most terrible aspects of existence one's blessing?"

 

 

II. 

 

It's a fair question. And I'm grateful to Solomon for raising it - and also for reminding me of the following passage from Bataille's short novel:

 

"There were actually three things about bullfights that fascinated [Simone]: the first, when the bull comes hurtling out  of the bullpen like a big rat; the second, when its horns plunge all the way into the flank of a mare; the third, when that ludicrous, raw-boned mare gallops across the arena [...] dragging a huge, vile bundle of bowels between her thighs in the most dreadful wan colours [...] Simone's heart throbbed fastest when the exploding bladder dropped its mass of mare's urine on the sand in one quick plop." [2]

 

Sixteen-year-old Simone, then, is the literary antithesis of forty-year-old Kate Leslie, the protagonist of Lawence's Plumed Serpent, who is utterly ashamed and nauseated by what she witnesses at the bullring. Having expected a display of bravery and a gallant show, Kate is shocked by the human cowardice and beastliness - not to mention the sight of blood and smell of bursten bowels [3].

 

But Simone loves everything about the bullfight; the heat, the noise, the cruelty, and not least the possibility of seeing a toreador injured by a monstrously lunging bull. 

 

When her wealthy English patron, Sir Edmund, informs her that at one time it was customary to serve the roasted testicles of the slaughtered bulls to guests seated in the front row of the arena, she begs him to obtain for her the balls of the first beast killed - only she insists they be served raw on a white plate, so that she might lift her dress and sit on them.

 

Unfortunately, this last part proves tricky to accomplish unobserved in a crowded arena. And so Simone simply holds the dish containing the two peeled testicles on her lap, until the opportunity arises to bite into one of them and then slowly and surely insert the other into her cunt - a lewd act which coincides with a handsome young bullfighter having an eye gauged out by a bull "with the same force as a bundle of innards from a belly" [4].                  

 

 

III.

 

What, then, are we to make of this - and how, then, are we to answer Síomón Solomon's question?

 

Firstly, I concede that it takes an almost inhuman effort to affirm even a single moment or joy, when it's in the knowledge that by so doing we affirm also every pain, every sadness, every cruelty, and every obscenity. But that's precisely what we are challenged to do by authors, like Bataille, who subscribe to the idea that all things are tied together beneath the same dark sun. 

 

However, affirming the fact that all things are part of a general economy of the whole, does not, as far as I can see make one morally complicit with evil, nor does it oblige one to participate in wrongdoing. 

 

I can affirm, for example, the pride of the peacock and the lust of the goat, without being a preening narcissist or a licentious libertine; I can affirm the vital cruelty of the natural world, without wanting to watch or make animals suffer in the bullring; and I can even read works of transgressive literature without wanting to act out ... 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'I Don't Know as I Get What D. H. Lawrence is Driving at When He Writes of Bursten Bowels ...' (6 June 2023): click here.   

[2] Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye, trans. Joachim Neugroschal, (Penguin Books, 1982), p. 47.

      For readers unfamiliar with this classic work of the porno-philosophical imagination (originally published in 1928), Simone is a sixteen-year-old erotomaniac with a perverse penchant for inserting soft globular objects - be they eyes, testicles, or boiled eggs - into her vagina or between her arse cheeks. Half-way through the novel, she and her lover - a distant cousin who is the tale's anonymous narrator - run away to Spain in order to escape a police investigation in their native France. Here, they are supported by a fabulously rich (and depraved) Englishman, Sir Edmund, who enthusiastically lays on obscene entertainments for the young couple.  

[3] See Chapter 1 of D. H. Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), 'Beginnings of a Bull-Fight'. 

[4] Bataille, Story of the Eye ... p. 54.

I Don't Know as I Get What D. H. Lawrence is Driving at When He Writes of Bursten Bowels ...

Picasso: Gored Horse (1917) 

Graphite pencil on canvas with ochre primer 

(80.2 x 103.3 cm)

Museu Picasso de Barcelona

 

 

I. 

 

As readers of D. H. Lawrence are very well aware, he loves to write about the mysterious nether region of the human body known as the loins - i.e., that zone of libidinal intensity that lies somewhere between the ribs and the pelvis (or above the legs, but below the waist).

 

In fact, the only thing that excites his imagination more are the bowels ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Unfortunately, a bit like Frank O'Hara, I'm not quite sure I always understand what Lawrence is getting at when he uses this term [1]. On the one hand, it seems to be more than simply an anatomical reference to the gastrointestinal tract; indeed, for Lawrence, the bowels seem to be the seat of human compassion from which the deepest desires also spring. 

 

But, on the other hand, Lawrence likes to base his philosophical understanding of the body in biology where possible. So when he talks about the bowels, he is also referring us to the digestive system and those sausage-like organs known as the intestines or entrails. 

 

And, rather like Kenneth Williams, who described his daily bowel movements obsessively in his diaries, Lawrence seems to be plagued by a fear of things not working properly in this region, as we can see in the novel Kangaroo (1923), for example, when the marsupial-like fascist Ben Cooley is shot several times in his "'bloomin' Kangaroo guts'" [2], as one of his followers says.

 

Richard Somers - the book's Lawrentian avatar - visits Cooley in the hospital and can barely disguise his horror and disgust at the thought of ruptured bowels:

 

"Somers found Kangaroo in bed, very yellow, and thin [...] with haunted, frightened eyes. The room had many flowers, and was perfumed with eau de cologne, but through the perfume came an unpleasant, discernible stench. [...]

      Somers could not detach his mind from the slight, yet pervading sickening smell.

      "'My sewers leak,' said Kangaroo bitterly, as if divining the other's thought." [3]

 

Bruce Steele's explanatory note on this is spot-on:

 

"Jack's angry reaction to his leader's having been shot in the stomach and not killed outright probably reflects the First World War soldier's fear of abdominal wounds. In a pre-biotic age, peritonitis was a common and deadly complication of such wounds. While a ruptured bowel could be stitched, contamination of the abdominal cavity was frequently fatal; it would account for  the 'unpleasant, discernible stench' and Kangaroo's diagnosis 'My sewers leak'. If the sniper had deliberately aimed at his stomach rather than his head - which would probably have killed him instantly - it would have been in the knowledge that the victim would almost certainly die a slow and painful death." [4]

 

Of course, whilst being shot in the stomach can lead to a slow and painful death for a man, being disemboweled by the horns of an angry bull can be an equally horrific (and, arguably, even more obscene) way for an elderly horse to die.

 

And so to Mexico City ...   

 

 

III.

 

There are several disturbing scenes in Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), including the opening one set at the plaza de toros [5] - and I'm not referring to the fact that someone in the crowd thought it funny to throw an orange at the bald spot on Owen's sunburnt head.

 

Rather, I'm referring to the following incident involving a blindfolded horse ...

 

"The picador pulled his feeble horse round slowly, to face the bull, and slowly he leaned forward and shoved his lance-point into the bull's shoulder. The bull, as if the horse were a great wasp that had stung him deep, suddenly lowered his head in a jerk of surprise and lifted his horns straight up into the horse's abdomen. And without more ado, over went horse and rider, like a tottering monument upset.

      The rider scrambled from under the horse and went running away with his lance. The old horse, in complete dazed amusement, struggled to rise, as if overcome with dumb incomprehension. And the bull, with a red place on his shoulder welling a trickle of dark blood, stood looking round in equally hopeless amazement.

      But the wound was hurting. He saw the queer sight of the horse half reared from the ground, trying to get to its feet. And he smelled blood and bowels.

      So, rather vaguely, as if not quite knowing what he ought to do, the bull once more lowered his head and pushed his sharp, florishing horns in the horse's belly, working them up and down inside there with a vague sort of satisfaction." [6] 

      

As the novel's protagonist Kate Leslie rightly recognises, this shocking spectacle reveals nothing so much as human cowardice and indecency. She turns her face away in disgust. And when she looks again, "it was to see the horse feebly and dazedly walking out of the ring, with a great ball of its own entrails hanging out of its abdomen and swinging reddish against its own legs as it automatically moved". [7] 

 

But the sordid show isn't over: another horse is brought into the bullring so that it may be publicly disemboweled for the amusement of the crowd:

 

"Kate knew what was coming. Before she could look away, the bull had charged on the limping horse from behind [...] the horse was up-ended absurdly, one of the bull's horns between his hind legs and deep in his inside. Down went the horse, collapsing in front, but his rear was still heaved up, with the bull's horn working vigorously up and down inside him, while he lay on his neck all twisted. And a huge heap of bowels coming out. And a nauseous stench." [8] 

 

 

IV. 

 

I've never been (and wouldn't go) to a bullfight, and so would find it difficult (and disturbing) to visually imagine this scene were it not for the fact that Picasso - a lifelong bullfighting enthusiast - produced the image at the top of this post, after attending a bullfight in Barcelona during his stay in the city in 1917.

 

As the anonymous author of a piece describing this work on the Picasso Museum's website rightly notes:    

 

"In contrast to what he had mostly done on previous occasions, here the artist leaves aside the colourful and festive representation of the spectacle of bullfighting to focus his attention [...] on the solitary agony of the disemboweled horse, which collapses until it falls on its knees in a fetal position or prayer posture that has been compared to that of a fossilised crustacean or bird. Picasso manages to transcribe the animal's stabbing pain by means of its outstretched neck and raised head, looking upwards with a fixed gaze, as if asking for mercy to put an end to its cruel agony, once and for all." [9]

 

The author concludes: 

 

"The drama and cruelty of the scene reaches its zenith with the horn that sprouts from the ground and stands threateningly, waiting for the horse to finish collapsing to then finish it off." [10] 

 

I suppose, to end on a slightly more positive note, it might be mentioned that bullfighting was banned in Catalonia several years ago and the the last bullfight in the region took place in September 2011. [11]

 

However, there are still eight countries in the world where this ancient festival of gore still takes place - Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador - and every year around 180,000 bulls (and 200 horses) are slaughtered in the ring.

 

 

V. 

 

In sum, I might not get what D. H. Lawrence is driving at when he writes of bursten bowels, but I do know: 

 

(i) I wouldn't want to be shot in the stomach ...

 

(ii) I don't like cruelty to animals ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Frank O'Hara, 'I don't know as I get what D. H. Lawrence is driving at', Selected Poems, ed. Mark Ford, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), p. 167. The poem can be read online at allpoetry.com: click here. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge Unversity Press, 1994), p. 317.

 

[3] Ibid., pp. 322-323.    

[4] Bruce Steele's explanatory note to 317:12 of D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo ... p. 406.

[5] In Lawrence's day, the main bullring in Mexico City was the Toreo de la Condesa. This ancient bullring was replaced in 1946 by the monumental Plaza de toros México, an arena that seats over 41,000 people.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark, pp. 15-16.

[7] Ibid., p. 16. 

[8] Ibid. 

[9-10] See the text that accompanies Picasso's Gored Horse (1917) on the Museu Picasso de Barcelona website: click here. 

[11] The ban was officially annulled for being unconstitutional by Spain's highest court in October 2016. However, despite the overturning of the ban, no further bullfight has taken place in Catalonia.