The Goddess, the Whore, and the Policewoman (Notes on D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse)

Hans Burgkmair the Elder's depiction of Babylon the Great;
Mother of Prostitutes and Earthly Abominations, etc.
One of a series of woodcuts for Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament (1523)

Coloured and uploaded to Wikipedia by Shakko (2008)

According to D. H. Lawrence, if the ancient Jews hated pagan gods on the one hand, then, on the other, they "more than hated the great pagan goddesses" [120]. Which is why the author of the Book of Revelation found it tricky trying to reconcile the overtly pagan figure of the woman clothed with the sun with his own religious misogyny.

This wonder-woman, writes Lawrence, "was too splendidly suggestive of the great goddess of the east, the Great Mother" [120], for John of Patmos. So, whilst he reluctantly allows her into the Bible, he makes sure she is soon chased off into the wilderness by a dragon and presents us with the alternative figure of the Scarlet Woman, whom we are encouraged to curse and call vile names, rather than revere. 

As Lawrence notes, this marks a real turning point in the text:

"There is a great change. We leave the old cosmic and elemental world, and come to the late Jewish world of angels like policemen and postmen. It is a world essentialy uninteresting, save for the great vision of the Scarlet Woman, which [...] is, of course, the reversal of the great woman clothed in the sun". [120]

He continues:

"Only the great whore of Babylon rises rather splendid, sitting in her purple and scarlet upon her scarlet beast. She is the Magna Mater in malefic aspect, clothed in the colours of the angry sun, and throned upon the great red dragon of the angry cosmic power. Splendid she sits, and splendid is her Babylon." [121]

Alas, the exiling of the goddess, with her feet upon the moon and crowned with the stars of heaven, and her replacement with the Scarlet Woman - magnificent as she may be holding her golden cup filled with the wine of sensual pleasure - has had negative consequences for us all - but particularly women.  

For women are not only obliged to deal with the virgin/whore dichotomy that these myths help to entrench within our thinking, but they are also the ones who remain most bitterly trapped, according to Lawrence, in the folds of the Christian Logos:

"Today, the best part of womanhood is wrapped tight and tense in the folds of the Logos, she is bodiless, abstract, and driven by a self-determination terrible to behold. A strange 'spritual' creature is woman today, driven on and on by the evil demon of the old Logos, never for a moment allowed to escape ..." [126]

Worse, she has lost her nakedness and is condemned to wear a police-woman's uniform: "Let her dress up fluffy as she likes, or white and virginal, still underneath it all you can see the stiff folds of the modern police-woman's uniform ..."* [127]

I'm not sure if that's true, or fair, or even if I quite know what Lawrence is driving at here, but on that note I'll say evening all and close the post ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

* Of course, some readers might find that thought to their liking: click here for a post on the fetishistic appeal of women in uniforms

Notes on Mr. Peanut and Bertie Bassett

 

I.

As George once remarked to Jerry, when it comes to selecting a romantic partner you could do a lot worse than Mr. Peanut [1], the sophisticated and elegant figure - some might even call him a swell - who made a career with the American snack-food company Planters (a division of Kraft Heinz).

Although probably better known in the US than the UK, he is reportedly of British heritage and goes by the real name of Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe (Mr. Peanut merely being a nickname based on his striking resemblance to a peanut in its shell).    

With his top hat, monacle, and cane - not to mention white gloves and spats - Mr. Peanut has an iconic image, little changed since he first unveiled the look back in 1916 [2]. By the mid-1930s, Mr. Peanut was recognised wherever he went and his fame only increased when he later appeared in numerous TV commercials as an animated cartoon character.

More recently, he appeared as a stop motion figure in a real world setting. It wasn't until 2010, however, that Mr. Peanut was given his first lines to speak (though it's rumoured that the actor Robert Downey Jr. actually voiced the role and, in 2018, it was decided he should revert to being a strong silent type once more).   

Then, at the begining of this year, Planters took the extraordinary decision of killing the character off and replacing him with an infantile - supposedly cooler - incarnation called Baby Nut, who will reach out to the next generation.

The decision brought a (surprisingly) mixed reaction from fans, media commentators, and industry experts.  

II.

I suppose the nearest we have to Mr. Peanut in the UK is Bertie Bassett ... A cheeky little chap who has been part of British popular culture since 1929 and whose body appears to be composed entirely of liquorice; but then it takes all sorts I suppose.

Like Mr. Peanut, Bertie carries a cane, but he lacks the former's dapper appearance and slightly rakish charm.

Nevertheless, Bertie does have an eye for the ladies and he marked his 80th birthday in 2009 by marrying Betty Bassett - the face of Red Liquorice Allsorts (but presumably no relation) - at the Mondelēz International factory in Sheffield, home to many iconic brands and the largest confectionary site in Europe, producing around 40,000 tonnes of sweets and crisps each year.  
  

Notes

[1] I'm referring to the episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The English Patient' [S8/E17], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by Steve Koren, which originally aired on March 13, 1997. Click here to watch the relevant scenes on YouTube.  

[2] When, in 2006, Planters mooted the idea of refreshing Mr. Peanut's look by giving him a bow tie or pocketwatch, the public made it clear online that they didn't want to see any changes.

Reflections on the Woman with the Heart Shaped Face

Sylvia Sidney: The Woman with the Heart Shaped Face

Is this the perfect female face?

I suppose it depends on who you ask - though it would surely be churlish to dispute that Sylvia Sidney's face is anything other than lovely to look at. At any rate, attendees at the 1934 Southern California Cosmetologists conference declared it to be ideal, displaying as it did their seven key features:

1. The length of the face equals three nose lengths ...

2. The space in between the eyes is the width of one eye ...    

3. Upper and lower lips are the same width ...

4. The eyebrows are symmetrical and conform to the line of the nose ...

5. The distance from the lower eyelid to the upper eyelid is the same as between the upper eyelid and eyebrow ...

6. The eyebrow begins on the same line as the corner of the eye nearest to the nose ...

7. The width of the face from cheek to cheek is equal to two lengths of the nose.

Obviously, the crucial thing here is symmetry. No one wants to look at a lopsided face and ugly mugs, we might say, begin where facial regularity ends. 

And yet, studies suggest that - as a matter of fact - most people don't want perfect symmetry; that it's the tiny imperfections and imbalances that add character and charm to a face.

Besides, aesthetically pleasing doesn't always mean sexually desirable; physical beauty of face and form can sometimes bore rather than arouse - does the Venus de Milo cause an erection in anyone other than the most ardent statue fetishist?    

In Praise of Amateurs

Sadly, it seems to me that amateurism is, in this professional era, increasingly looked down upon (with the possible exception being that of amateur porn; the erotic folk art of our digital age).  

Which is a pity: for I tend to be of a Greek persuasion and consider the amateur as a virtuous figure; a free spirit of noble intent; open minded, devoted, and full of passion for their discipline regardless of whether this brings public recognition or generates an income.  

Professionals may regard them with a mixture of suspicion and contempt,* but gentleman amateurs, independent scholars, hommes de lettres, and even dilettanti who take a somewhat gay and carefree approach to the things that delight them, have often made crucial contributions to science, the arts, sport, and society.

Ultimately, as Roland Barthes notes, the true amateur is not defined by inferior knowledge or an imperfect technique. But, rather, by the fact that he does not not identify himself to others in order to impress or intimidate; nor constantly worry about status and reputation.

Also, crucially, the amateur unsettles the distinction between work and play, art and life, which is doubtless why they are feared by those who like to police borders, protect categories, and form professional associations.   

* Note:  I was once told by a career academic that people like me were parasites upon those who did all the hardwork in their field of study. I think the idea was to shame me into feeling irresponsible and immature; or to shame me into an apology, perhaps. But I'll never feel ashamed or apologise for being a lover.   

Post 1500: Reflections on the Extinct British Wolf and the Triumph of the Sheep

Illustration of a wolf in George Shaw's  
Musei Leveriani (1729)

I.

This is post 1500: a number which means nothing to me, but which many 16th-century Christians thought significant; having failed to kick off at the millennium, they figured that the end of the world might commence half-time after the time (an obscure phrase found in the Book of Revelation).

Sadly for them - but happily for the rest of us - 1500 merely marked (somewhat arbitrarily) the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern Era (though don't suggest this to Bruno (nous n'avons jamais été modernes) Latour, or he'll kick off).  

I'm not, however, going to write here of apocalyptic Christian eschatology; nor do I intend to discuss the concept of modernity. Rather, I would like to say something about the extinction of a magnificent mammal species from these islands: for 1500 is also thought to be the year in which the last wolf in England was killed ...[1]


II.

Not only were wolves once present throughout the British Isles, they were present in large numbers. And, unlike other British animals, skeletal remains suggest they were not subject to insular dwarfism (i.e., the phenomenon whereby large animals evolve a smaller body size when their range is limited due to living in restricted circumstances, such as on an island for example).

Despite being large in number and big in size, wolves were exterminated from Britain thanks to a combination of deforestation and ruthless, unrestricted hunting and trapping (for skins and for the sadistic pleasure human beings take in killing animals, including defenceless cubs). 

King Edward I (1272-1307) was not only the Hammer of the Scots, he was also the monarch who ordered the total extermination of the wolf and personally employed a wolf-hunter with instructions to begin by killing them in the counties close to the Welsh border where they were particularly numerous thanks to the density of forest [2]. 

Later kings were just as merciless when it came to the wolf question and one wonders at the reason for this lycophobia ...

That is to say, why were wolves - more than any other wild beast - so widely feared and hated (not just in Britain, but across Europe). It can't just have an economic cause, although it's true that wolves kill livestock and compete with humans for game; there's surely something else going on here to explain this murderous animosity.

Maybe, as highly intelligent and social animals who live in extended family groups, they are rather too much like us - only stronger, faster, and with bigger teeth. Maybe, as we became ever-more civilised and ovine, bleating about our righteousness and exceptionalism, we grew to resent their wild nature. Maybe we secretly desire to be a bit more ferocious - thus the centrality of the werewolf myth in European folklore. Who knows? 

III.

As readers of Pagan Magazine will recall, I've always loved wolves [3], and so naturally support their proposed reintroduction into parts of the UK.

In fact, I think we should bring back the lynx too - and maybe even release a family of brown bears into the mix; the more large carnivores prowling around the better in my view, and not simply to help control the ever-expanding numbers of deer and wild boar.

For mostly I want wolves back in the hope that they might devour a few fat sheep who understand nothing of life or death, but exist in swollen nullity. To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence, it's not the howl of the wolf that we have to fear today, but the masses of rank sheep and what he terms the egoism of the flock [4] ...


Notes

[1] Reports of wolves sighted in more rural areas of England continued until the 18th-century and they certainly hung on for an extended period in the Scottish Highlands (officially, the last wolf was shot in Perthshire, in 1680).   

[2] For those, like me, whose geography isn't great, that's the counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire.

[3] See issue XI: 'Ragnarok: Twilight of the Gods and the Coming of the Wolf', (1986).

[4] See D. H. Lawrence. 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 25-52. The lines I paraphrase and refer to here are on p. 43.

On the Intelligence of Reptiles

If men were as much men as lizards are lizards 

they'd be worth looking at. - D. H. Lawrence

I.

I suppose the cognitive ability of mammals and birds is now pretty much an established fact; that is to say, human beings have finally conceded that they are not the only creatures that possess minds and know how to think and use language, etc.

Unfortunately, however, there's still lingering prejudice when it comes to other classes of animal - reptiles, for example, are still not accorded the respect they deserve and are generally considered less intelligent even than certain species of fish ...!

I'm sure it's not only the scalies and herpetophiles out there who are offended by the injustice of this ...


II.

It's true, of course, that reptile brains are (relative to their body mass) significantly smaller than our own. But, be that as it may, reptiles are far from mindless - and certainly not as stupid as some people like to believe. It's worth recalling that dinosaurs roamed the earth for around 175 million years - which is a lot longer than the 100,000 years modern humans have clocked up (or are ever likely to clock up).

Larger lizards and crocodiles regularly exhibit complex behaviour, including cooperation; Komodo dragons are known to engage in play; turtles are also fun and sociable and some species are better even than white rats in learning to navigate their way round mazes. D. H. Lawrence, who famously immortalised a number of tortoises in his poetry, would be delighted to know that they are capable of learning via operant conditioning and that they are able to retain learned behaviours thanks to excellent long-term memories.   

We know these things because after spending years putting mammals, birds, and fish through their paces, researchers are finally giving reptiles the opportunity to show us what they can do via tests specifically designed for them.

Now that scientists have got better at designing reptile-friendly experiments, they've been pretty astonished by the results: reptiles, it seems, are not just good-looking, they're pretty savvy after all - and certainly more than living machines driven by instinct alone; they possess what is known as behavioral flexibility (i.e., the ability to alter behaviour as external circumstances change).

Although the field of reptile cognition is still in its infancy, it's already clear that intelligence is more widely distributed across the animal kingdom than previously realised - and so human exceptionalism takes another poke in the eye!

Notes 

The lines from D. H. Lawrence are from the short verse 'Lizard', in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 455. Click here to read online. 

For a related post to this one on the intelligence of fish, click here.

On the Intelligence of Fish

I'm not as dumb as you look ...

I.

I suppose the cognitive ability of mammals and birds is now pretty much an established fact; that is to say, human beings have finally conceded that they are not the only creatures that possess minds and know how to think and use language, etc.

Unfortunately, however, there's still lingering prejudice when it comes to other classes of animal - fish, for example, are still not accorded the respect they deserve and many people continue to subscribe to the belief that they and other acquatic lifeforms are intellectually inferior to terrestrial organisms.

One doesn't have to be an ichthyophile - or even particularly fond of our underwater friends - to be irritated by the injustice of this and the anthropocentric conceit it displays ... 

II.

To say it loud and clear right from the start: fish are not stupid!

In fact, in many areas, such as memory, their cognitive abilities match or exceed those of animals usually ranked above them in the hierarchy of intelligence constructed by man; numerous studies have shown that they can retain information for months or even years - and this includes goldfish!

And whilst they typically have quite small brains (relative to body size), some species have extremely large brains (again, relative to body size) and are capable of learning complex tasks and forming cognitive maps. (There are some people who can barely manage to do this.) 

Of course, having only mouths in which to hold and manipulate objects (no fingers, no hands or feet), severely restricts their use of tools. But some species of fish use shells and rocks in ways that might surprise many and in one recent laboratory study, Atlantic cod were trained to pull a string in order to release food from a feeding machine. Also, let's not ignore the fact that fish can construct sophisticated shelters and nesting places ...

Such behaviour may be innate, rather than learned, but it's still impressive: for we're not just talking holes in the sand here, but deep and extensive excavations reinforced with coral fragments; beautiful-looking pebble mounds and sand towers; nests made from vegetation, glued together with bodily fluids specially secreted for the job and decorated with coloured algae and/or bits of artificial material that now litter their world just like ours. The fact that fish will often make repairs and build extensions (quicker than my next-door-neighbour) further suggests considerable DIY know-how.

Moving on, we come to the question of social intelligence (i.e., the capacity to know themselves and recognise others) ...

It seems that fish can remember things about other individuals; whether they are friend or foe, for example - something that is obviously quite crucial in a world of dog eat dogfish - and this causes them to modify their own behaviour accordingly (including ways that might even be thought of as manipulative and deceptive, though probably it's going a bit far to say they possess a theory of mind).

Although rare, there are instances of fish cooperating with others of their kind; when hunting prey, for example, it often pays to work in groups. And they can communicate amongst themselves using sign language as well as squeaks and other low-frequency sounds, inaudible to the human ear.

Thus, D. H. Lawrence was wrong to describe them as soundless and out of touch. Indeed, they even enjoy gently rubbing their bodies against one another, so are not suspended in watery isolation, forever apart. That said, Lawrence does recognise that fish not only know fear but joie de vivre - and their joy is often expressed in play behaviour; another key indicator of intelligence.

Finally, fish can learn from other fish simply by observing them in action (this is sometimes described as the cultural transmission of knowledge). You might ask what does a fish have to learn? Well, the location of a reliable food source, or a convenient hiding place, would be two examples of things that it might be crucial to have knowledge of. And, if you are a fish who happens to provide a grooming service for another species, it's important to learn how to do a good job.    

So, in sum: fish are intelligent and sensitive animals, with good memories, impressive problem-solving skills, and the ability to learn new things. We should treat them with the same care and respect as we would warm-blooded creatures, even if they are to some extent forever beyond our understanding and even if, as Lawrence says, we will never know their gods.


Notes

Image adapted by Stephen Alexander from a bottle of Albariño by Faustino Rivero Ulecia; a refreshing white wine with a citric finish that makes a perfect accompaniment to, er, fish ... 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Fish', in The Poems, Vol I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 289-94. The poem is very lovely, even if technically incorrect on a number of points; but then, to be fair, Lawrence was a poet and not a marine biologist. It can be read online by clicking here. 

For a sister post to this one on the intelligence of reptiles, click here. 

Watching the Detectives: Notes on Special Branch and The Sweeney

George Sewell and Patrick Mower as Craven and Haggerty in Special Branch

John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as Regan and Carter in The Sweeney

I suppose every generation is convinced that the TV crime dramas of their youth were the best. For me, for example, as a child of the seventies, nothing before or after can touch The Sweeney (1975-78).

However, I do have a growing affection for the show that was in many ways its direct predecessor; Special Branch (1969-74), which was also made by Thames Television and which, like The Sweeney, ran for 53 episodes over four series.

Actually, when I say I have an increasing amount of affection for Special Branch, I'm only referring to series 3 and 4, starring George Sewell (as DCI Alan Craven) and Patrick Mower (as DCI Tom Haggerty). I have little familiarity with the earlier episodes and, despite the presence of Derren Nesbitt as dandyish DCI Jordan - the copper with a kipper tie - no great interest in them.   

For me, the show only really took off in 1973. And the reason for this - apart from the change of cast - was because Euston Films* took charge of the production and pioneered a technique of fast shooting on location using 16mm film for a grittier, more realistic look (a technique and a look they would later perfect on The Sweeney).

Craven and Haggerty were harder, more cynical characters than previously seen and Special Branch storylines became more complex; often dealing with social and political issues, for example, and revealing the sometimes dubious relationship between police and criminals (it's amusing to note that both George Sewell and Patrick Mower would later appear as villians in The Sweeney). 

So, here we are in 2020 ... What's the appeal of Craven and Haggerty, Regan and Carter, today?

Is it just nostalgia for unreconstructed seventies masculinity? Perhaps - though we are of course now invited to view such through an ironic lens whilst passing moral judgement on the racism and sexism and bad fashion choices, etc. 

Or is it, perhaps, that Special Branch and The Sweeney remain massively entertaining and that they still have something important to teach viewers; not about policing or political correctness, but about how to make memorable (well-written, well-acted) television.     

Notes

*Note: Euston Films was originally a subsidary of Thames Television, founded in 1971 by Lloyd Shirley (Controller of Drama), George Taylor (Head of Film Facilities), and Brian Tesler (Director of Programmes). As well as Special Branch and The Sweeney, they also gave us Van der Valk and Minder. 

Bonus: to listen to the Special Branch theme tune (composed by Robert Early): click here. And to watch the original opening and closing credits to The Sweeney (music composed by Harry South): click here.

Like a Face Drawn in Sand: Anti-Humanism in D. H. Lawrence and Michel Foucault

Detail from the front cover of Foucault Now, 

ed. James D. Faubion, (Polity Press, 2014)

I.

According to Andrew Keese, a faculty member of the English Dept. at Texas Tech University: "Lawrence worried about anything which might force humans to be something other than they were actually born to be." [1]

But this is laughably mistaken in its natal essentialism. For Lawrence, the self was a product of external forces: "I am myself, and I remain myself only by the grace of the powers that enter me, from the unseen, and make me forever newly myself." [2]

He vehemently rejected the idea of an individual as a fixed entity with a predetermined fate and, like Foucault, Lawrence was happy to welcome the incoming tide that would mark the death of man. Not because he was anti-human, but because he was anti-humanist and keen to challenge all forms of anthropocentric thinking, including the conceited idea that man is the necessary end or highpoint of evolution.


II.

For readers unfamiliar with Foucault's notorious (but very beautiful) concluding paragraphs from The Order of Things, here they are in full: 

"One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area - European culture since the sixteenth century - one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it. It is not around him and his secrets that knowledge prowled for so long in the darkness. In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the knowledge of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words - in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that profound history of the Same –-only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the transition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that had long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

      If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility –-without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises - were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." [3]

Foucault's argument is actually very straightforward: he is using the term man to refer to a cultural and historical formation - not a biological organism or zoological species. In other words, man is a specific (but contingent) mode of being that has arisen at a particular time due to circumstances that will sooner or later change.

Understanding man in this way allows us to also think about the play of forces (social, economic, technological, etc.) peculiar to each epoch and how these interact with each other and with the forces within the human animal to produce new forms and ways of being. Unlike Rupert Birkin in Women in Love, Foucault is not fantasising about a world without humans, but thinking rather of a future in which the convenient fiction of humanity as presently conceived is no longer tenable.

Further, Foucault is interested in the extent to which man as a conceptual category can be understood as a bourgeois compromise (or as a bridge between ape and Übermensch, as Nietzsche would say) and to what degree man is merely something that obstructs and inhibits vital forces and flows.       

To be honest, the idea is so simple and - I would have thought - uncontroversial, that I cannot see why some people (including those who should know better) have problems understanding or accepting it ... 

Notes

[1] Andrew Keese, 'Engineering Away Humanity: Lawrence on Technology and Mental Consciousness in Lady Chatterley's Lover and Pansies', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ed. Indrek Männiste, (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 127-135. The line quoted is on p. 134. 

I'm afraid that Keese misunderstands both Lawrence and Michel Foucault in this essay; particularly on the subject of power, which neither saw as corrupting (that would be Lord Acton), nor as something merely repressive. Nor is it correct to say that, like Lawrence, Foucault regards humans as being "out of balance between their instinctual and mental selves" [129]. That's more a Freudian schema than Foucauldian and, as far as I recall, Foucault doesn't uphold the Cartesian mind-body division in his corporeal ontology.     

[2] D. H. Lawrence, '...... Love Was Once a Little Boy', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 344.

[3] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (Routledge, 1989), pp. 421-22.

All Aboard! On D. H. Lawrence and Trains

Ian McKellen as D. H. Lawrence and Janet Suzman 
as Frieda Lawrence aboard a train in Priest of Love 
(dir. Christopher Miles, 1981)

I.

To be honest, I would probably associate trains more with the cinema than with literature; I'm thinking of Hitchcock's films for starters and, of course, the Lumière brothers' L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895).

Having said that, I can recall several novels featuring trains and/or railway stations as a prominent motif: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1878) would be one example; as would Zola's psychological thriller La Bête humaine (1890). Then there's Graham Greene's Stamboul Train (1932) and, of course, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) ...

But one author whom I wouldn't immediately think of in relation to trains, is D. H. Lawrence. And yet, as two recent essays by Lawrence scholars have shown, trains are actually quite a crucial and recurrent feature of his work ...


II.

According to Indrek Männiste, "one of the most idiosyncratic ways in which Lawrence realizes the cantus technicus in counterpoint is his frequent use of the train trope” [183].

He explains:

"While the more sensationalist drama of Victorian times focused mainly on the dangers of rail travel and its shock elements, Lawrence uses trains synecdochally as the ambassadors of modernity, and plays them out, as always, as threatening on a more metaphysical plane. Trains are described habitually as intruders on nature and as estranging to certain characters." [183]

Indeed, trains – along with cars and buses and other motor vehicles – force the countryside itself to retreat into its own isolation, making it evermore mysteriously inaccessible. As Lawrence notes in a late essay: "People have more 'joy-rides and outings [...] but they never seem to touch the reality of the country-side' (LEA, 15-16)." [185]

And yet – to deploy my own adversative conjunction if I may – trains play a positive role in Lawrence’s fiction too ...

Helen Baron demonstrates how they "occur frequently in his novels, stories, and poems" [191], often advancing the plot, heightening the drama, or helping him reveal things about his characters. She also explores "the variety of ways that Lawrence subtly focused on trains […] to coerce – overtly or subliminally – the reader’s feelings and responses” [191].

So, for all his siderodromophobia, it's possible that Lawrence was a secret locomotive lover after all and one thinks of his poem 'Kisses in the Train', in which, as Baron notes, the erotic element is intensified by being set on a speeding train. The opening two stanzas of the poem read:

I saw the Midlands
      Revolve through her hair;
The fields of autumn
      Stretching bare,
And sheep on pasture
      Tossed back in scare.

And still as ever
      The world went round,
My mouth on her pulsing
      Throat was found,
And my breast to her beating
      Breast was bound.  

Notes

Indrek Männiste, 'Poetics of Technology: D. H. Lawrence and the Well-Tempered Counterpoint', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ed. Indrek Männiste, (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 175-189.

Helen Baron, 'Trains in D. H. Lawrence's Creative Writing', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ibid. pp. 191-202.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Kisses in the Train', Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 83-4. 

For my review of D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, see The Lawrentian, ed. David Brock, (Autumn Edition, 2020). For a revised extract from this review in the form of a post on Torpedo the Ark, click here.