The Perfect Poem (Adapted from Balzac's Short Story Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu)

 

 

 

"You may know your syntax thoroughly and make no blunders in your grammar, 

but it takes that and something more to make a great poet." [1]

 

I.

 

On a cold December morning just after Christmas, a friend mentioned a poem he had been working on for over a decade. That seemed an awfully long time to me, but he was adamant that it would be the verse by which he would finally make his name in the world of letters. 

 

'Besides', he added, 'what are ten short years in the eternal struggle with language?'   

 

I said I'd be happy to read it, if he wanted me too, but he was somewhat taken aback - even slightly offended - by the suggestion: "No, no! It's not perfect yet; something still remains for me to do."

 

Which is fair enough. The mysterious poem, a work of patience on which he had wrought so long in secret, was doubtless also a work of genius - for my friend was a man of great passion and enthusiasm who sees above and beyond mundane reality. But until he wished for it to be read, there was nothing further I could say.   

 

II. 

 

The following spring, my friend sent me a text asking if I could come visit him at his retreat in Cornwall.   

When I arrived, I was shocked. For he had "fallen a victim to one of those profound and spontaneous fits of discouragement that are caused, according to medical doctors, by indigestion, flatulence, fever, or enlargement of the spleen; or, if you take the opinion of the Spiritualists, by the imperfections of our mortal nature". 

 

The poor devil had exhausted himself in putting the finishing touches to his magnificent poem. Slumped in a huge armchair upholstered in blue velvet, he glanced up at me like a man who had sunk into depression. 

 

Naturally, I asked him what was wrong: 'Alas!' he cried, 'for one joyous moment I believed my work was finished, but now I'm sure there are still lines that need rewriting.'

 

As was his wont in times of despair, he had decided to flee abroad: 'I am going to France, to Germany, to Greece in search of inspiration - I don't know when or if I'll be back!'

 

Thinking it might help, I again offered to read the poem. He looked at me aghast: 'What! Show you my verse in all its imperfection - never! I would sooner kill myself - and kill you, my friend - than do that.'

 

I must confess myself amazed by the murderous vehemence with which these words were spoken and knew not how to reply to this utterance of an emotion as hyserical as it was profound. Was it the fabled madness of the poet or had my friend "fallen a victim to some freak of the artist's fancy?"

 

'Okay', I said. 'But be careful you don't die in the process of trying to find the perfect wording and leave the poem unfinished.'

 

 

III.

 

It was a cold December morning just before Christmas when next I heard from Moisés, back from his travels and renting rooms in London. 'Come and visit me at once,' he cried. 'My poem is perfect and I can now show it you with pride.'

 

His small studio flat was in disorder and covered with dust; a few pictures hung here and there upon the wall of dead poets and pop stars from another time. 

 

Without even offering me a drink, he pressed a single sheet of A4 paper into my hands. His dyed-black hair was disordered and his face glowed "with a more than human exaltation". 'Here it is!' he cried. 'Did you ever think that language was capable of such perfection? Have I not spoken with such elemental power that a new world is brought into being?' 

 

I looked at the sheet, but could see nothing written there, just the brilliant whiteness of the paper. Only in the bottom right-hand corner he had signed his name with such delicate beauty that it made me smile and I began "to have some understanding, vague though it was, of the ecstasy in which he lived".  

 

The next day, I heard my friend had killed himself, having first destroyed his perfect poem and all other writings.

 

   

Notes

 

[1] This was spoken by Maître Frenhofer, the main character in a two-part short story by Balzac entitled Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu ("The Unknown Masterpiece"). 

      It was first published in L'Artiste, a weekly illustrated review, in August 1831. It was later published  in Balzac's Études philosophiques (1837) and integrated into La Comédie humaine in 1846. The work is a reflection on art which had a profound influence on the thinking of both Cézanne and Picasso.

      This post is adapted from Balzac's tale and both paraphrases and incorporates lines from it. The original story can be read as a Project Gutenberg ebook: click here. 

 

Aphrodite's Girdle

Aphrodite's Girdle, contributed by Mary Metzer to

The Museum of Fictional Literary Artifacts [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The girdle has a long, long history, reaching back into an ancient time that fashion historians term BP (Before Playtex). 

 

Perhaps the most famous girdle of all was one said to have been worn by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love - although whether it was recognisably a girdle in the modern sense is debatable [2]. 

 

According to Homer, the girdle was imbued with the magical power to arouse desire in mortals and gods alike [3]. Thus, it can legitimately be regarded as an erotic accessory rather than merely a garment worn for practical reasons; Aphrodite, one assumes, didn't require any help maintaining her shape.  

The same might not be true of Hera, who had a fuller, more matronly figure and sometimes borrowed the girdle from Aphrodite when looking for a little extra something in order to capture the attentions of her husband (and brother) Zeus [4]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, later authors claim that Aphrodite also lent her embroidered girdle to Helen, to ensure that Paris would succumb to her natural charms. 

 

But Aphrodite was always keen to have the item returned to her as soon as possible, however, and the 18th-century German poet and playwright Schiller explains why that is so in his long philosophical essay On Grace and Dignity (1793) [5]. 

According to Schiller, Aphrodite - or Venus as he prefers to call her in the Roman manner - can be stripped naked and still remain beautiful; but without her girdle she lacks grace - and without grace she is no longer so alluring. 

 

In other words, even a naturally beautful woman is desexualised the moment she is stripped naked; something that Roland Barthes picks up on in his essay on striptease in Mythologies. 

 

Ultimately, it's the clothes and jewellery and make-up - "in short the whole spectrum of adornment" [6] that give the living flesh its erotic fascination and places the body within the realm of luxurious objects.

   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Museum of Fictional Literary Artifacts is an amusing digital project created by students at Dakota State University. The aim is to establish an online archive of imaginary objects that might - had they been actual things - have been sought after by collectors. The MFLA houses a vast number of such artifacts found in all genres of literary work, from novels to comic books. For more details, please click here.  

 

[2] The Girdle of Aphrodite has variously been imagined as a strap, a belt, or a breast-band rather than a girdle as we might think of it today in a post-Playtex world of rubber. Whatever it was, Aphrodite's girdle has been a popular theme in the arts and literature of Europe, particularly during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods.  

 

[3] See Homer, Iliad 14: 159-221. Homer. An English translation of the full text by A.T. Murray can be found on the Perseus Digital Library: click here to read Book 14.

 

[4] Theirs was not what you might call a happy marriage; she may have found him agreeable at first - just as he found her sexually attractive - but their relationship is marked by infidelity, jealousy, and violence. 

 

[5] Über Anmut und Würde (1793) is an attempt to reconcile aesthetics and ethics based upon the philosophy of  Immanuel Kant. For Schiller, the trick is to synthesise the physical and spiritual nature of man and thus produce a beautiful soul. An English translation of this essay by George Gregory can be read as a pdf online via the Schiller Institute website: click here.

 

[6] Roland Barthes, 'Sriptease', in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, (The Noonday Press, 1991), p. 85.   

 

  

A Tale of Two Ears and Notes on Aural Regeneration

This ear? 

Yes, that there.

 

 

I. 

 

For Síomón Solomon, the human ear "is not merely a passive cavity or vacuous opening but a transfigurative chamber of auditory fantasy" [1]. If this makes it for some the most poetic organ, so too does it help to explain why for ear fetishists aural sex is the only game in town.

 

One famous lughole lover is the American filmmaker David Lynch, who not only assigns the severed, decomposing ear crawling with ants discovered in a field at the start of his cult movie Blue Velvet (1986) symbolic importance, but gives it something of a lead role [2]. 

 

For as Solomon goes on to note, Lynch became so fixated with the prosthetic ear, that he and his make-up supervisor Jeff Goodwin referred to it as a character in its own right - 'Mr Ear' - and designed it out of silicone rather than latex, "even embellishing it, in a superbly disquieting fetishistic signature, with locks of Lynch's own scissored hair" [3]. 

 

Lynch's ear serves much the same function for Jeffrey Beaumont as the rabbit hole does for Alice; it is what leads him (and us) into a troubling and dangerous underworld. It is only when he finally comes through his ordeal that he (and we as viewers) exit the ear.

 

Of course, not all detached ears found lying on the ground have such a serious symbolic role to play. In Carry On Screaming! (dir. Gerald Thomas,1966), for example, Oddbod's ear has a strictly comic function, allowing for a couple of predictable (but still amusing) gags. 

 

Whether the ear possesses the same remarkable regenerative capacity as the repulsive-looking finger which Oddbod also loses, wasn't made clear in the film, but the possibility of regrowing lost tissues or organs is an intriguing one worth looking at in a bit more detail ...

 

 

II.

 

Salamanders are well-known for their ability to regenerate complex body parts and this has long fascinated scientists keen to discover if people too may one day be able to regrow lost limbs, etc. 

 

Whether this would involve genetically engineering human-salamander hybrids or simply transplanting blastema tissue from these loveable amphibians, I don't know. But, either way, it would be remarkable if doctors found a way to induce regeneration (and tumor regression) in animals such as ourselves with a limited ability to repair our own bodies and a penchant for the quick-fix of forming scar tissue. 

 

Having said that, it might prove easier simply to 3D print new bits and bobs in the lab, as in the recent case of a young Mexican woman who had her external ear reconstructed using this technique to create a living tissue transplant. 

 

According to press reports [4], the transplant procedure was successfully carried out at a US hospital in March 2022 and such newly developed technology promises to transform the lives of people born with microtia; a rare congenital condition in which one or both outer ears are absent or incompletely formed.

 

The company behind this groundbreaking work  - 3DBio Therapeutics - said the new ear was composed of a 3D-printed collagen hydrogel scaffold using the patient's own cartilage cells. Clinical trials involving several other patients are ongoing, but fingers crossed the organ won't be rejected so that what's ear today won't be gone tomorrow.    

 

 

 

Photos from the Microtia-Congenital Ear Institute 

and 3DBio Therapeutics

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, (Peter Lang, 2020), p. 101. For further discussion of Solomon's audiopoetics, see the post of 10 May 2021: click here.

 

[2] To watch the scene in Blue Velvet in which Jeffrey Beaumont (played by Kyle MacLachlan) discovers the ear, click here.

 

[3] Síomón Solomon, Hölderlin's Poltergeists, pp. 99-100. 

[4] See for example Roni Caryn Rabin, 'Doctors Transplant Ear of Human Cells, Made by 3-D Printer', The New York Times (2 June 2022), and/or Nicola Davis, 'Woman's ear rebuilt with 3D-printed living tissue implant' The Guardian (2 June 2022).

Nothing Changes on New Year's Day

Lasciate ogni speranza per il 2024

 

 

I don't like - and have never liked - the Irish rock band U2.

 

But that isn't to say they haven't written some fine songs, including 'New Year's Day', which contains the killer line: Nothing changes on New Year's Day [1] - a line which counters all the mad optimism of those gawping at fireworks, popping champagne corks, and singing 'Auld Lang Syne' without any idea of what the phrase means. 

 

Often, these are the same people who criticise others for being despairing about the past or present and who insist on being hopeful for the future - even though the expectation of positive outcomes with respect to temporal progress seems entirely groundless.   

 

I don't want to sound too diabolical, but it seems to me that the phrase lasciate ogni speranza written above the gates of Hell is actually a sound piece of advice [2]. For Nietzsche may have a point when he suggests that it is hope which prolongs the torments of man and is thus the most evil of all evils [3].    

 

Finally, let me remind readers also that whilst hope may be one of the great Christian virtues, in Norse mythology it is simply the drool dripping from the mouth of the monstrous Fenris Wolf and courage a term for the gay bravery displayed by the warrior in the absence of hope.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] U2, 'New Year's Day', released as a lead single from the album War (Island Records, 1983): click here to play the official video (dir. Meiert Avis). 

 

[2] The line in full reads Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ('Abandon all hope, ye who enter here') and it concludes an inscription above the gates of Hell according to Dante. See Inferno Canto III, line 9: click here.

[3] See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, II 71: click here.

Ross Barkan's Dream of a New Romantic Age

Ross Barkan (2017) 

Award-winning novelist, journalist, and new romantic

rossbarkin.com 

 

According to the American writer Ross Barkan, the times they are a-changin' and we are about to witness a romantic backlash to technology as the younger generation discover that it is in fact possible to live offline: "A rebellion, both conscious and unconscious, has begun." [1]  

 

Having said that, the truth is Barkan isn't sure about this coming cultural upheaval. After all, the future cannot be predicted, so he is merely putting forward a hypothesis (i.e., hazarding a guess) in order to produce an interesting end of year column for The Guardian.  

 

Thus, whilst he insists that this nascent new romanticism echoes "in its own way, a great shift that came more than two centuries ago, out of the ashes of the Napoleonic wars", he still qualifies his argument by placing it in the non-space between maybe and might.  

 

Personally, I doubt that this rebellion against digital order and technology's enframing of existence will amount to very much. Those whom Barkan calls the young may be superstitious and in search of spiritual meaning - may indulge in nostalgia for a time they never knew and amuse themselves by constructing retro-futures - but I don't see them switching off their smartphones.  

 

Indeed, when I spoke to a small group of pagan witches a few months ago in praise of silence, sececy, and shadows [2], they were receptive to the ideas, but it was also clear that, as Barkan points out, the digital era has permanently changed the way people view the world and interact with one another: 

 

"For thousands of years, mature human beings knew how to be alone in their own thoughts and tolerate boredom. The smartphone's addictive entertainments immolated attention spans." 

 

And that's the problem, is it not? 

 

The changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were certainly significant and wide-ranging, but the poets, painters, and philosophers of Romanticism had not had their attention spans immolated, their imaginations captured, or their brains rewired. And so they could still think, feel, and dream in a recognisably human manner. I'm not sure, however, that's still the case today. 

 

For, arguably, the thing which the Romantics feared most has happened; not merely the enslavement of flesh and blood to the iron machine, but technology's "encroachment on the human spirit" and the emergence of an inhuman (and transhuman) future.        

 

Betraying his own romantic optimism, Barkan ultimately hopes, like Nietzsche, that art will prove to be the counternihilistic force par excellence [4]; art, that is, made by a creative class of men and women who, although beleagured, have retained something of their humanity and are ready to rise up - not the mediocre art produced by AI.     

 

If, for now, smartphones are ubiquitous and the tech giants still own and dominate the present, it is not clear whether they will own and dominate the future [3]. For generational change is coming, says Barkan, and "romanticism won't hold still; it promises, at the minimum, a wild and unsteady flame" that might illuminate the world to come in an unexpected manner: "Perhaps we are ready to be surprised and amazed again." [5]   

 

Yeah, perhaps ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Ross Barkan, 'The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms', The Guardian (28 Dec 2023): click here. All lines quoted in this post are from this article by Barkan, unless otherwise indicated.

 

[2] See 'In Defence of Isis Veiled: What a Practice of Ocuultism Might Mean in an Age of Transparency' (9 Sept 2023): click here. 

      As a matter of fact, Barkan holds out even less hope than I do in the power of magic; it will take more than spells and incantations to challenge the digital world order and irrationality, on its own, is no virtue: 

      "Embracing the paranormal or believing, wholeheartedly, that star positions can determine personalities can be harmless fun –-until the delusions become life-consuming and despair takes hold when they inevitably do not deliver on their promise." 

 

[3] Writing in a slightly different version of his piece in The Guardian published on his substack (Political Currents), Barkan says: 

      "Facebook and Twitter are losing their grip. TikTok rises, but will last only so long. Instagram hums through its strange middle period, no longer a place for genuine photography, reflecting unreality back to us. None of these platforms will vanish. But I would bet they will all matter less in ten years." 

      See Ross Barkan, 'The New Romantic Age' (28 Dec 2023): click here.

 

[4] For Nietzsche, if we are ever to move beyond the impasse of the present and give birth to new forms and ways of being, then "unheard-of-artistic powers will be needed". For art alone is the "great means of making life possible [...] the great stimulant of life". I think we might do well to question such romanticism with respect to the potential of art as means of cultural rehabilitation (and, indeed, Nietzsche will himself later insist on tying his own aesthetics to a form of Dionysian pessimism). 

      The lines quoted from Nietzsche can be found in 'The Philosopher: Reflections on the Struggle between Art and Knowledge', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 9, and The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 452, respectively.

 

[5] Ross Barkan, 'The New Romantic Age' ... click here.  

 

 

On Defeminisation and Remasculinisation

Jonathan Borofsky: Male/Female (2000)

colour lithograph and screenprint (47" x 32")

borofsky.com

 

 

If losing a mother may be written down as a Wildean misfortune, then to lose one's sister and an ex-wife in the same year certainly looks like carelessness on my part - although since two of the above removed themselves from my life of their own volition, that perhaps mitigates any accusation of negligence. 

 

What's striking is how these deaths have resulted in a significant defeminisation of my world and how it got me thinking that perhaps that's not such a bad thing; that, arguably, wider society might also benefit from a cultural defeminisation (and, indeed, a dequeering). 

 

For perhaps just as we need what is most evil in us for what is best in us, so too an active element of masculinity - even at its most heteronormatively toxic - is essential for human wellbeing. 

 

However, as models of masculinity have varied across time and place, what it might mean to remasculinise culture is debatable and I can't stand those idiots who think it's just a question of manning up [1].

 

D. H. Lawrence would probably insist it's more a matter of rediscovering what he terms phallic tenderness [2].  

Notes

[1] Having said that, I have in the past been willing to let this phrase pass: click here. 

[2] Lawrence introduces this notion in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) and other works from this late period. In brief, for Lawrence, the phallus is not merely an organ belonging to the male body, but a sacred symbol of relatedness which forms a bridge between man and woman (and to the future); as for tenderness, that's his term for a passionate form of human contact based upon the inspiration of touch - i.e., it's his word for the desire that is productive of social reality. 

 

 

What Was I Thinking? (28 December)

 

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

28 December (2013-2021)

 

Sometimes, it's interesting to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by - and sometimes it's simply embarrassing ...

 

Our God is Woman: Our Mission is Protest! 

On this date in 2013, for example, I was keen to express my support for a twenty-year old philosophy student and Femen activist, Josephine Witt, who staged a one-woman protest at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne, briefly disrupting a televised Christmas mass by getting her tits out and declaring herself to be God, before half-a-dozen horrified clerics wearing an assortment of robes pulled her from the altar, bundled her out of the building, and handed her over to the secular forces of law and order. 

 

I'm not sure I would now be quite so sympathetic to such an action. 

 

 

In Praise of an Unnatural Death 

 

Skip forward three years and on this date in 2016 I was keen to challenge the judgement of God by refusing to accept what medical professionals describe as death by natural causes; i.e., the all-too-predictable kind of death that results from illness, old age, or an internal malfunction of the body and its organs. 

 

As a philosopher, I argued, one should always desire and seek out the opposite of this; i.e., the joy of an unnatural death, be it by accident, misadventure, homicide, suicide, or that mysterious non-category that is undetermined and which, for those enigmatic individuals who pride themselves on their ambiguity, must surely be the way to go.

 

I then confessed my own preference to be executed, like William Palmer, the notorious nineteenth-century murderer known as the Prince of Poisoners, who is said to have climbed the gallows and placed a foot tentatively on the trapdoor before enquiring of the hangman: Is it safe? 

 

I would like, in other words, to go to my death with the cool courage and stoicism of the dandy and a ready quip on my lips that might cause even my executioner to smile (and serve also to annoy the po-faced authorities who demand seriousness and expect contrition in such circumstances).

 

 

To See More Clearly Than Ever Before 

 

In December 2018, meanwhile, I was entering my Daphne Du Maurier phase - a phase that never really passed and became a long-lasting love for the author and her astonishing body of work. On the 28th of this month I wrote a series of notes on one of her near-perfect short stories - suggested to me by the poet Simon Solomon - 'The Blue Lenses' (1959).

 

The premise of the post and story was the same: what if everyone were to suddenly lose their human features and be seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality - would we still find this gently amusing? I suspect not: in all likelihood, initial astonishment would quickly give way to horror. 

 

However we choose to describe it, du Maurier's tale is not simply an imaginative fantasy and she, like D. H. Lawrence, is "another of the writers who leave us troubled and filled with admiration" precisely because she was able to tie her work to "real and unheard of becomings". Hers is a genuinely black art, as Deleuze and Guattari would say.   

 

Judenstern

 

Making particular reference to the case of Serge Gainsbourg, back on 28 December, 2019 I was concerned with the history of the badge that Jews were often obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., in order to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders). 

 

Although we tend to think of this practice in the context of Hitler's Germany, the Nazis were actually drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.  

 

Gainsbourg was required to wear such as a young boy in wartime Paris; an experience he made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded, and which he eventually wrote a song about: click here. 

 

 

Piquerism and Notes on Knife Play

 

On 28 December of the following year, 2020, I expressed my fascination with piquerism; i.e., the practice of penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects, including pins, razors, and knives - something that I traced back to young childhood and the time I placed a drawing pin on a fat girl's chair in order to see if she would explode like a balloon with a loud bang.

 

Following this, I then explored episodes of knife play in the work of D. H. Lawrence, of which there are several, including the notorious scene in chapter XXIII of The Plumed Serpent (1926) in which Cipriano publicly executes a group of stripped and blindfolded prisoners with a bright, thin dagger, plunging the latter into their chests with swift, heavy stabs. 

 

I think even at the time I was uncomfortable with this and not able to dismiss it with the same ease as Kate Leslie who, if shocked and appalled at first by the killings, eventually concludes that her new husband's penchant for a little ritualised murder is fine if carried out in good conscience.

 

 

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes

 

If over the Xmas period in 2018 I was reading Daphne du Maurier, in 2021 I was enjoying the work of J. G. Ballard, including a short story entitled 'Prima Belladonna' which was included in the collection Vermilion Sands (1971) - a collection which celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality. 

 

The alien female figure of Jane Ciracylides, with her rich patina-golden skin and insects for eyes, has continued to fascinate me to this day. Who knows, perhaps I'll get to play i-Go with her one day (even if she always cheats).  

 

Dermatillomania: On Blogging as an Itch One Simply Has to Scratch

Simon Reynolds 

blissblog

 

 

Although I don't think of myself as a blogger [1] - and although I don't regularly read any blogs - I appreciated a piece in The Guardian today by Simon Reynolds [2] which offered a nice defence of blogging as a genre ...

 

Whilst conceding that blogging is an outdated format and that many blog posts often go unread, Reynolds nevertheless celebrates the freedom that this type of text allows, enabling the writer to ramble and discuss any subject that captures their interest. 

 

He writes:

 

"Blogging, for me, is the perfect format. No restrictions when it comes to length or brevity: a post can be a considered and meticulously composed 3,000-word essay, or a spurted splat of speculation or whimsy. No rules about structure or consistency of tone." 

 

Continuing: 

 

"A blogpost can be half-baked and barely proved [...] Purely for my own pleasure, I do often go deep. But it's nearer the truth to say that some posts are outcomes of rambles across the archives of the internet, byproducts of the odd information trawled up and the lateral connections created. [...] When blogging, I can meander, take short cuts and trespass in fields where I don't belong. Because I’m not pitching an idea to a publication or presenting my credentials as an authority, I am able to tackle subjects outside my expertise."     

 

You can also discuss topics that are no longer topical: "An old record or TV programme you've stumbled on, or simply remembered  ..." For in an atemporal culture, past, present and future are collapsed and one can even be nostalgic about the latter. 

 

Reynolds also refers to the compulsive nature of blog writing; analogous to an excoriation disorder, or an itch one has to scratch, as he puts it. There's certainly some truth in that - as there is in the idea that long term bloggers have an obsessive character and the fanatic determination to carry on regardless; "I can’t imagine stopping blogging - even once there are just a few of us still standing."

 

I've been posting work on Torpedo the Ark for over ten years, but Reynolds has been blogging for twice as long [3], so I certainly respect him for that, knowing as I do the amount of time and effort that goes into producing content on a regular basis.

 

I also respect Reynolds for the fact that he (like me) would continue writing and publishing posts even if they had no audience at all. For amassing followers and forming some kind of community isn't what it's about; "connectivity was only ever part of the appeal".     

 

Nor is generating an income from one's work a real concern: 

 

"Freedom and doing it for free go together. I've resisted the idea of going the Substack or newsletter route. If I were to become conscious of having a subscriber base, I'd start trying to please them. And blogging should be the opposite of work." 

 

Precisely ... Well said that man!

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'Post 2000: From Journal to Mémoire' (4 Jan 2023), wherein I explain how I view Torpedo the Ark (it's not a blog) and myself as a writer (I'm not a blogger): click here.   

 

[2] Simon Reynolds, 'I'll never stop blogging: it's an itch I have to scratch - and I don’t care if it's an outdated format', The Guardian (26 Dec 2023): click here. All quotes in the above post are from this article. 

 

[3] Torpedo the Ark began in November 2012. Reynolds began his blogging career in 2002, having  operated a website for about six years prior to that date. He posts work today across several blogs, but his primary outlet is blissblog, the motto of which - My brain thinks blog-like - is one I wish I'd thought of.  

 

 

Shrinking Violets

Field pansy (Viola arvensis) 

Photograph by Samson Acoca-Pidolle

 

I. 

 

Born in February, I've always been very attached to that colourful garden flower known as the pansy and which belongs to the wider family of violets.   

 

The fact that the English name is derived from the French word pensée - meaning thought - also appeals to me as a philosopher, as it did to D. H. Lawrence, who famously called his late series of little pieces written in 1928-29 Pansies [1].   

 

And so it saddened me to read the latest news out of France that wild pansies are evolving into self-pollinating plants and so producing ever-smaller flowers ...

II.

 

In a recent report in The Guardian, Phoebe Weston explains how rapidly declining insect numbers [2] have obliged pansies to find an alternative method of reproduction and effectively abandon the mutually beneficial relationship formed over millions of years with their six-legged friends [3].

 

Unfortunately, this traps both pansies and their pollinators in a vicious cycle; for when plants make less effort to attract insects and produce less food for them to feed on, this accelerates their decline, which in turn ... well, you get the idea.  

 

A scientific study conducted outside Paris [4], found that the flowers of field pansies are 10% smaller and producing 20% less nectar than thirty years ago and previous work indicated that the number of plants relying on self-pollination has increased by a quarter over the past two decades. 

 

The speed of this real time evolution has, apparently, surprised researchers - just as it has disheartened me, for I don't want to live in a world of shrinking violets in which insects no longer gaily buzz ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'Pansies: Brief Notes on D. H. Lawrence's Excremental Aesthetic' (5 Oct 2019): click here.

 

[2]  Falling insect numbers have been reported by studies across Europe. One German study (conducted on a nature reserve) found that there were 75% fewer insects in 2016 compared to 1989. See the post entitled 'Insecticide and the Eco-Apocalypse' (21 Oct 2017): click here. 

[3] Phoebe Weston, 'Flowers "giving up" on scarce insects and evolving to self-pollinate, say scientists', The Guardian (20 Dec 2023): click here. 

[4] See Samson Acoca-Pidolle, Perrine Gauthier, Louis Devresse, Antoine Deverge Merdrignac, Virginie Pons, and Pierre-Olivier Cheptou, 'Ongoing convergent evolution of a selfing syndrome threatens plant–pollinator interactions', New Phytologist (Dec 2023): click here.

 

 

A Christmas Dilemma

 

I received the above Xmas card which contained the following greeting:

 

Have yourself a savage little Christmas

Make the Yuletide fierce ...

 

I liked it and put it under the tree. But my American friend, Winona, who is far more alert to the racial politics of art and language, said it was inherently offensive on multiple levels. 

 

She explained how, for example, the image plays on white fear of the dark-skinned Other - portrayed here as an ape crazy gang member - and how the word savage is one that belongs to the lexicon of white supremacy and colonialism and is used to denigrate marginalised communities, dehumanise indigenous peoples, and justify genocide.  

 

My (tentative) suggestion that perhaps the meaning of the word had changed over time and had now to be considered within a different cultural context [1], wasn't met with much sympathy or given a great deal of consideration. 

 

Neither was the idea that perhaps it was just an amusing (if slightly disturbing) picture and that the sender of the card was simply referencing an album by Bow Wow Wow [2] and the popular Christmas song by Martin and Blane [3], without wishing to insult or upset anyone. 

 

It doesn't matter what the intention of the sender is, she said, going on to argue that even those who perpetuate the myth of the noble savage and celebrate primitivism are still part of the problem [4].

 

All of which leaves me with a dilemma: do I leave the card up and fall back on a free speech defence; or do I take it down and concede that Winona's politically correct case is just that - i.e., right and proper. 

 

I don't want to seem like an insensitive jerk flaunting their white privilege. But, on the other hand, nor do I want to become the kind of  woke snowflake who self-censors in order to virtue signal. I suppose the liberal compromise would be to leave it up, but hide it behind the other cards with their anodyne angels and innocuous robins ...  

 

    

Notes

 

[1] Savage - or sometimes savage as fuck (SAF) - has been used as online slang for some time now in order to characterise something as brutally honest, or ruthlessly hitting the nail on the head. It can also be used to indicate you find something extremely positive in a similar way that the term fierce is used within gay slang. 

 

[2] The Bow Wow Wow album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy was released on RCA Records in October 1981. Click here to play the opening track 'See Jungle! (Jungle Boy)' and/or here to play ('I'm a) TV Savage' (both written by Matthew Ashman, David Barbarossa, Leigh Gorman, and Malcolm McLaren).

[3] The popular Christmas song 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' was written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1944). The lines parodied from the second verse originally read: 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Make the Yuletide gay'. Click here to play Sinatra's version from the album A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra (Capitol Records, 1957 - remastered in 1999).     

 

[4] Winona has asked me to cite the following work by Ter Ellingson; The Myth of the Noble Savage, (University of California press, 2001). 

      In this study, Ellingson - an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Washington - shows how the myth of the noble savage did not, in fact, originate with the 18th-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and only really took hold as an idea when resurrected as a racist trope within mid-19th century British anthropology. See Amelia Hill's review of Ellingson's book in The Guardian (15 April 2001): click here.