Reflections on Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han (Part Two)

Cover of the original German edition

(Ullstein Verlag, 2022) [a]

 

 

I.

 

One of the key paragraphs in the opening chapter of Vita Contemplativa is this one:

 

"The dialectic of inactivity transforms inactivity into a threshold, a zone of indeterminacy that enables us to create something that was not there before. Without this threshold, the same keeps repeating itself." [17]  

 

In other words, the threshold of inactivity engineers difference and produces the new. For example, only silence enables us to say something previously unspoken and unheard of [b]. Madonna's insistence that we all express ourselves may be accompanied by a funky upbeat dance track, but the message is inherently fascist, ensuring conformity and sameness [c]. 

 

Jamie Reid was right: pop music keeps young people under control [d] and pop stars like Madonna are merely the "sexual organs of capital, the means of its procreation" [20].

 

Or, as Byung-Chul Han writes: "The compulsion to be active [...] turns out to be an efficient means of rule. If revolution is inconceivable today, that may be because we do not have time to think." [18] 

 

Perhaps if young people listened to less music and read more poetry, they'd be able to liberate "the immanence of life from the transcendence that alienates life from itself" [21]. Whether this results in bliss is debatable, but, who knows, it might at least rescue them from the abyss of the virtual and the hell of the same.  

  

II.

 

I have written several posts on Torpedo the Ark that refer to Cézanne's work - click here and/or here, for example - but I've never come across the notion that his canvases construct a landscape of inactivity in which things are wedded to one another until now.  

 

It's a nice idea. Or, at any rate, I like the idea of things falling in love and entering into "frank relations with one another" [24]; of tables and trees and bowls of fruit all interacting in a friendly manner whilst shining in their own singularity; "liberated from human intentions and actions" [24]. 

 

Cézanne's landscape of inactivity: "cuts ties with humanized nature, and restores an order of things that is not anthropomorphic, in which things can be themselves again" [24-25]. His apples, for example, are not merely fit for consumption, as D. H. Lawrence recognised [e]. 

 

This is at the heart of Cézanne's greatness; the fact that he allowed objects to "have their own dignity, their own radiance" [25] and didn't put himself into every picture. Indeed, he knew that a painting only succeeds when the artist makes himself absent.

 

 

III.   

 

Because he essentially comes out of the German Romantic tradition, it's no surprise to see that Han loves nature and posits the "reconciliation between humans and nature" as the "final purpose of a politics of inactivity" [26].   

 

He coninues: 

 

"The Anthropocene is the result of the total submission of nature to human action. Nature loses all independence and dignity. It is reduced to a part of, an appendix to, human history. The lawfulness of nature is subjected to human wilfulness and to the unpredictability of human action." [31] 

 

What can be done? 

 

Heidegger famously concluded that only a god can save us [f]. But for Han what is needed is an angel of inactivity to "arrest the human action that inevitably becomes apocalyptic" [33]. It's reflection that will lead us back from the edge of catastrophe and to that dwelling place where we have our being (on the earth and beneath the sky).  

 

Reflection - and learning to wait: "'Waiting is a capacity that transcends all power to act. One who finds his way into the ability to wait surpasses all achieving and its accomplishments'" [35][g] - which, arguably, is simply a Heideggerian version of the English proverb: Good things come to those who wait.

 

Han seems perfectly okay with this delving into folk wisdom, but I have to admit it troubles me; what next - should we write in praise of common sense and popular opinion ...? I do like reading Heidegger. And I do like reading Byung-Chul Han. But you have to be in a certain mood to do so ...

 

 

IV.

 

Funny enough, Han speaks about mood in Vita Contemplativa ... Being-in-a-mood, he says, precedes the being of consciousness and allows being-there to find expression. But mood is not something of our choosing or at our disposal: "It takes hold of us [...] we are thrown into it" [36].

 

And that's a good thing, as it reveals that our being-in-the-world is determined less by activity than by primordial ontological passivity. Actions are never thus "entirely free or spontaneous" [36]. And even thinking, says Han (following Heidegger), is grounded in mood. 

 

Thus, AI doesn't really think because it isn't capable of extracting thoughts out of mood: "Contemplative inactivity [...] is alien to the machine" [37], even when you switch it off. For the machine, to think is simply to produce data - it's certainly not about expressing gratitude.  

 

 

V.  

 

To return to the question of how to save the natural world, clearly we need a radically transformed relationship with the latter and this requires thinking through. That doesn't mean not doing anything, but it does mean questioning the will to activity that has brought us to where we are today:

 

"There can be no doubt that the determination to act is necessary in order to rectify the catastrophic consequences of human intervention in nature. But if the cause of the impending disaster is the view that what is absolutely fundamental is human action - action that has ruthlessly appropriated ad exploited nature - then we require a corrective to human action itself. We must therefore increase the proportion of action that is contemplative, that is, ensure that action is enriched by reflection." [ 40-41]   

 

It also means learning to breathe again ... for the compulsion "to be active, to produce and to perform. leads to breathlessness" [41]. That's certainly true. I've been slowly suffocating for the last eight years and very much hope that taking time to reflect a bit more carefully will, in future, allow me to finally catch my breath ...

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Although this is the cover of the original German edition, please note that page numbers given in this post refer to the English translation of Byung-Chul Han's work by Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2024), entitled Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity.  

[b] This is an idea found in the work of Deleuze, which Han acknowledges by quoting the following passage: 

      "So it's not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying." 

      See Gilles Deleuze, 'Mediators', in Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin, (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 129. 

[c] I have written about this song by Madonna and the socially corrosive effects of insistent self-expression in a post dated 6 August 2023: click here.

[d] The artist Jamie Reid is best known for his work with the Sex Pistols. His Stratoswasticaster design was intended to alert people to the oppressive nature of the music industry. Click here to view on artnet.

[e] See Lawrence's essay 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 182- 217. 

      For Lawrence: "Cézanne's apples are a real attempt to let the apple exist in its own separate entity, without transfusing it with personal emotion [...] It seems a small thing to do: yet it is the first real sign that man has made for thousands of years that he is willing to admit that matter actually exists." [201]

[f] This phrase - which, in the original German reads Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten - comes from an interview given by Martin Heidegger to Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff for Der Spiegel magazine in September 1966, but not published until after his death in May 1976. 

      The interview touched on many aspects of Heidegger's thinking, including the relationship between philosophy, politics, and culture. It was translated into English by William J. Richardson and published in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan, (Transaction Publishers, 1981), pp. 45-67. 

 

[g] Han is quoting Martin Heidegger, Country Path Conversations, trans. Bret W. Davis, (Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 147. Heidegger goes on to say: "In waiting, the human-being becomes gathered in attentiveness to that in which he belongs." Something I try to remind myself of when at the bus stop. 

 

 

Part one of this post on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa can be read by clicking here. 

 

Part three of this post on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa can be read by clicking here.

Reflections on Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han (Part One)

(Polity Press, 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

The subtitle of Byung-Chul Han's new little book is In Praise of Inactivity [a]. But it's important to understand at the outset that he uses this term in a positive philosophical sense. That is to say, he conceives of inactivity as a negative potentiality; the ability to do nothing.

 

But Han is not merely encouraging us to be idle in the laid-back and whimsical manner of Tom Hodgkinson - although, to be fair to the latter, I feel I was perhaps a little harsh on him back in 2012 [b]. Nor is he encouraging his readers to learn the art of immaculate perception so they can look at life without desire [c].     

 

He wants us, rather, to engage in a form of deep attentiveness that is central to the vita contemplativa [d]. To perform less: to consume less: to be still and silent a little more, so as to radiate in our own starry singularity and not merely keep rolling on and on like a stone subject to mechanical laws.    

 

 

II. 

 

In a line that would delight the witches of Treadwell's, Han writes: "Inactivity has a logic of its own, its own language, temporality, architecture, magnificence - even its own magic." [1] 

 

Inactivity, he goes on to say, is an intensity - an unseen power that is crucial to Dasein's existence (not a weakness, an absence, a lack, or a defect). And philosophical reflection - or thought in the Lawrentian sense of the term [e] - is born of this intensity. 

 

Only machines don't know how to rest or reflect; artificial intelligence is born of activity, not inactivity. They - the machines - may be very good at organising and coordinating chaos, but they don't know how to give style, which is why they may drive society forward, but they'll never give birth to culture:

 

"History and culture are not congruent. Culture is formed by diversion, excess and detour; it is not produced by following the path that leads straight to the goal. The essence at the core of culture is ornamentation. Culture sits beyond functionality and usefulness. The ornamental dimension, emancipated from any goal or use, is how life insists that it is more than survival. Life receives its divine radiance from that absolute decoration that does not adorn anything." [3]   

 

 

III.

 

Han is basically reviving an old set of terms and values, such as festivity and luxury, whilst rejecting those terms and values that define our present (utilitarian) world order: efficiency and functionality. Freedom from purpose and usefulness, he says, is "the essential core of inactivity" [5] and the key to human happiness. 

 

Which is fine - this remains an important teaching - but it's nothing new. And one can't help wondering if Han doesn't spend far more of his time endlessly re-reading those authors whom he privileges rather than contemplating life (and the natural world) directly. 

 

For whilst there are plenty of DWEMs in his book, there are very few live animals; even the hesitant wing of the butterfly is a reference to an elegy by Schiller (via Walter Benjamin) rather than to an actual insect and I miss the sound of bees buzzing and birds calling in his writing. 

 

Unfortunately, when you enter the space of thinking opened up by Han, it feels like one is entering a magnificent library or a cathedral rather than an "unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge" [f], or a jungle with "tigers and palm trees and rattle snakes" [g] and all the other wonders hatched by a hot sun. 

 

I think it was Sartre who once said of Bataille: 'He tells us to laugh, but he does not make us laugh.' And I kind of feel the same about Han: he tells us to dance and to play, but he fails to make us feel either lightfooted or lighthearted. Likewise, when he gathers us round the camp fire - a medium of inactivity - we are not warmed.   

 

 

IV.

 

I suppose the problem I have is that Han is just a bit too much of an ascetic philosopher. 

 

Thus, whilst he wants to revive the notion of the festival, he insists nevertheless that festivals must be "free from the needs of mere life" [7] and tries to convince us that it's better to fast than to feast; that the former is noble in character and helps initiate us into the secrets of food.  

 

What is inactivity, he suggests, other than ultimately a form of spiritual fasting. 

 

I have to admit, I don't like this idea of going to bed hungry and going to bed early; nor, for that matter, do I want to go to bed cold, as I've done that too often in the past and it doesn't make life any more vital or radiant. 

 

Nor does it make it easier to sleep - the latter being  a medium of truth for Han (as for Proust and Freud): "Sleep reveals a true internal world that lies behind the things of the external world, which are mere semblance. The dreamer delves into the deeper layers of being." [9] [h]

 

Again, that's not the kind of idea - or language - that I'm comfortable with. I simply do not believe that sleep and dreams are "privileged places for truth" [9] - even though I love a good nap as much as anyone.    

 

However, I'm a bit more sympathetic to the idea that boredom - as that state of inactivity which allows for mental relaxation - is something we should cherish (even whilst coming from a punk background in which being bored was just about the worst thing that could befall one). 

 

I understand now that boredom isn't half as boring as the distractions invented to relieve us from boredom and that the less able we are to endure boredom, so our ability to enjoy life's real pleasures or do great things decreases. As Han says: 

 

"The seed of the new is not the determination to act but the unconscious event. When we lose the capacity to experience boredom, we also lose access to the activities that rest on it." [17]

 

And so it is that now I admire those who, like David Puddy, can just patiently sit still during a flight without having to flick through a magazine, watch a film, or start a conversation [i].    

 

 

V. 

 

Blanchot, Han reminds us, places inactivity in close relation to death: as the utmost intensification of the latter. 

 

And so too does he suggest that art also requires an "intensive relation to death" [12]. It is death, for example - not the will to knowledge or self-expression - that opens up the space of literature and writers can only write thanks to their inactivity and their proximity to death.

 

And the best writers, as Roland Barthes recognised, are those who dare to be idle and do not continually affirm their authorship of a text, or constantly promote themselves: "They give up their names and become no one. Nameless and intentionless, they succumb to what happens." [15] 

 

In an interview for Le Monde in 1979, Barthes marvelled at the simplicity of a Zen poem which perfectly expresses what it is he dreams about:

 

Sitting peacefully doing nothing

Springtime is coming

and the grass grows all by itself [j]   

 

It's a nice thought that inactivity has a "de-subjectifying, de-individualizing, even disarming effect" [15]. That, in other words, it allows us to disappear and leave nothing behind us but a smile like the Cheshire Cat ...

 

 

John Tenniel's illustration of the Cheshire Cat beginning to 

vanish in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865)

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The book was originally published as Vita Contemplativa: Oder von der Untatigkeit (Ullstein Verlag, 2022). All page numbers given in the post refer to the English edition. 

 

[b] See the post entitled 'How to be an Idle Cunt' (29 Dec 2012): click here. 

 

[c] See the post entitled 'The Voyeur' (29 April 2013): click here. 

 

[d] This Latin phrase - popular with Augustine and the scholastics - comes from the ancient Greek concept of βίος θεωρητικός formulated by Aristotle and later developed by the Stoics. In English it is usually translated simply as contemplative life.   

 

[e] "Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness [...] a man in his wholeness wholly attending" and not the "jiggling and twisting of already existent ideas". See D. H. Lawrence, 'Thought', The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 580-81. 

      I discuss Lawrence's philosophy of mind with reference to this poem in a post published on 4 Dec 2015: click here.  

 

[f] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 53.

 

[g] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 165.  

 

[h] Click here for a post on sleep and dreams published on 6 Feb 2015. 

 

[i] David Puddy is a fictional character on the situation comedy Seinfeld, played by Patrick Warburton. He is the on-and-off boyfriend of the character Elaine Benes. Click here to watch the scene I'm thinking of in the season 9 episode 'The Butter Shave' (dir. Andy Ackerman, 1997).  

 

[j] See Roland Barthes, 'Dare to Be Lazy', in The Grain of the Voice, trans. Linda Coverdale, (University of California Press, 1991), p. 341. Han quotes this haiku on p. 15 of Vita Contemplativa.  

 

 

Further reflections on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa can be found in part two of this post - click here and part three: click here.   

From Duck Soup to Duck Rock: On Malcolm McLaren and the Marx Brothers

From Duck Soup to Duck Rock 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I.

 

Although Malcolm McLaren's album Duck Rock [1] was dedicated to his hero Haywire Mac [2], the title is actually a reference to the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup (1933) and it's no coincidence that McLaren is pictured on the record sleeve wearing a high-cut, double-breasted corduroy jacket based on the one famously worn by Chico [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Duck Soup is a musical black comedy with a satirical edge, directed by Leo McCarey and written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin). Released by Paramount Pictures in November 1933, it stars the four Marx Brothers; Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo (the latter making his final film appearance). 

 

At the time, the film was not particularly well received; neither by audiences nor critics [4]. However, it's now regarded - along with A Night at the Opera (1935) - as the Marx Brothers' finest achievement, although, personally, I must confess I still don't find it funny even if I have come to appreciate the film's cultural and political significance [5].   

 

Apparently, it was McCarey who suggested the film be called Duck Soup, after earlier working titles - including Firecrackers, Grasshoppers, and Oo La La - had all been abandoned. Amusingly, McCarey had previously used Duck Soup for a silent film starring Laurel and Hardy [6]. 

 

A popular slang expression in the US at that time, duck soup referred to something easy to do (just as, conversely, to duck out of something meant to avoid doing it altogether). 

 

 

III.

 

Paul Gorman mentions that McLaren enjoyed watching Marx Brothers' films at a flea-pit cinema in northwest London during his student days [7], so there's a good chance he saw Duck Soup at this time. 

 

And, interestingly, due to the fact that the film ridicules war and nationalism and also pokes fun at censorship, it was popular with many others on the radical left (or associated with the so-called counterculture) in the 1960s [8].

 

But who knows what Malcolm found so appealing about this movie? 

 

If it wasn't the anarchic, anti-authoritarian, and irreverent elements, then perhaps it was simply the ducks swimming in a kettle and quacking away quite happily that most struck a chord with him; one thinks, for example, of the refrain used in 'Buffalo Gals': Duck! Duck! Duck!   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Duck Rock was released in 1983 on Charisma Records. I have previously published posts inspired by several of the tracks on the album, including 'Buffalo Gals' and 'Double Dutch' - click here and here.

[2] Harry K. McClintock (1884 - 1957), aka Haywire Mac, was (among other things) an American singer-songwriter in the hobo-punk tradition. He is arguably best known for his song "The Big Rock Candy Mountains", about which I have written here. 

[3] The Chico Jacket was part of the McLaren/Westwood collection 'Nostalgia of Mud' (A/W 1983): click here, for a post on this if interested. Unlike Chico Marx, McLaren chose to match the jacket with an Appalachian mountain hat, rather than Tyrolean style headgear.  

 

[4] Duck Soup was not a box office failure - in fact, it was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1933 - but it didn't go down as well as the producers hoped, possibly because audiences found the anarchic buffoonery and cynicism of the Marx Brothers inappropriate at a time of economic and political crisis.

 

[5] Wishing to play down the political nature of the film, Groucho Marx insisted it had no real significance and was simply four Jewish comics trying to get a laugh. Nevertheless, the Brothers were delighted to hear that Mussolini banned the film in Fascist Italy, having found it personally insulting.

 

[6] The Laurel and Hardy silent short comedy Duck Soup (1927), was directed by Fred Guiol, with Leo McCarey acting as a supervising director. The film was considered lost until a print was discovered in 1974. It was remade as Another Fine Mess in 1930 (dir. James Parrott). 

 

[7] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), pp. 499-500. 

      The cinema attended by McLaren was the Tolmer, situated just a short walk from Euston Station. It was known as the cheapest cinema in London and attracted what might be described as a mixed audience, including cinephiles, prostitutes, and pensioners. It closed in 1972.

 

[8] Whether that includes Woody Allen and The Beatles is debatable, but both the director of Bananas (1971) and the stars of Help! (dir. Richard Lester, 1965) have admitted they drew insparation from Duck Soup.  

 

 

Bonus: to watch the official Duck Soup (1933) trailer on YouTube, please click here.

My Brush with Scientology

Results of the Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis [1]

which I completed on 9 November 1984

 

 

Watching an episode of Peep Show in which Jez and Super Hans join a religious cult [2], reminded me that I was once persuaded to take a free personality test administered by the Church of Scientology ...

Friday 9 November 1984 [3]

 

Assured that it wouldn't take more than twenty minutes to complete and that I'd have the results within the hour - and as it's always amusing to discover how others see one - I agreed. Of the 200 multiple choice questions, I answered 198 and left two blank; one that was too stupid to even consider and one concerning my voting habits (as an anarchist, that's not a political process I participate in).  

      Afterwards, I went to Dillons to look for a book on fairy tales by Jack Zipes, recommended to me by Malcolm. On the way back, I stopped to pick up my test and was given a brief explanation of the results (all conveniently plotted on a graph) by a friendly (though somewhat earnest) young woman who said, amongst other things, I was depressed, nervous, overly critical, and irresponsible. 

      All of these things may very well be true, but I begged to differ with her conclusion that I was in need of urgent attention - although everyone at Charisma seemed to think that was probably the case, particularly Jon, who found it all very amusing.     

 

      

Notes

 

[1] The Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis is a long list of questions (each of which can be answered yes, no, or maybe) purporting to be personality test and administered for free by the Church of Scientology as an important part of its global recruitment process. 

      However, it is not a scientifically recognised test and has been criticised by numerous professional bodies. The results of the test are invariably negative, as might be expected.

 

[2] Peep Show, episode six of series five; 'Mark's Women' (dir. Becky Martin, 2008).

      Jez and Hans are busking opposite The New Wellness Centre operated by a mysterious new religious movement (don't call it a cult). Deciding that it will be warmer in the Centre and that it might also be fun to laugh at the freaks, they go inside, only to then sign up as fervent new members. Click here and here for a couple of clips on Youtube.  

 

[3] This is (a slightly revised) entry from The Von Hell Diaries (1980-89). 

      Just to clarify: Dillons was a famous Bloomsbury bookshop (founded by Una Dillon in 1936); Jack Zipes is an American professor of German literature and cultural studies (the book I wanted was Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (1979); the Malcolm that I mention is Malcolm McLaren; Charisma was a famous independent record label based in Soho; Jon is Jon Crawley, director of Charisma Music Publishing.  

 

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.