In Memory of Two Dead Artists: Malcolm McLaren and Pablo Picasso

Malcolm admiring Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair (1931)

at the Guggenheim (c. 1984) [1]

 

 

Doubtless many well-known people have died on April 8th, but the only two who really interest me are Malcolm McLaren and Pablo Picasso; the former departing this life in 2010, aged 64, and the latter in 1973, aged 91.

 

McLaren had a tremendous knowledge of modern art and admired many painters, but I seem to remember him having a genuine penchant for Picasso; he and Vivienne Westwood famously using Picasso's Weeping Woman (1937) on a toga dress in their Nostalgia of Mud / Buffalo collection (A/W 1982-83).

 

I was surprised, therefore, when I discovered that his response upon first hearing of the Spanish artist's death was simply to say 'Oh good' [2].   

Nevertheless, when asked to pose for an official publicity shot at the Guggenheim ten years later, it was besides a Picasso that Malcolm chose to stand - not a work by Rothko, Warhol, or Francis Bacon ... 

 

Whether he had a particular liking for this 1931 portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, I don't know. But I find it hard to believe that the picture was chosen purely at random.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the photographer who took this picture, which was used as a publicity shot by Charisma Records, to whom McLaren was signed in the early-mid '80s.*   

 

[2] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 185. 

      Roberta Bayley recalls that it was the American fashion entrepreneur, designer, and journalist Gene Krell who broke the news of Picasso's death to McLaren. 

 

 

* Update: Paul Gorman kindly informs me the image is from S8/E9 of ITV's The South Bank Show on McLaren, which aired on 2 December 1984. For a post in which I reflect on this show, click here.   

 

   

Easter with the Anti-Christ: In Praise of Pontius Pilate

"I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. 

All who love the truth recognise that what I say is true."

      "What is truth?" Pilate asked. [1] 

 

 

Of all the many characters named in the New Testament, there is only one whom Nietzsche deems worthy of honour; Pontius Pilate, the man who governed Judea by the authority of Rome and held ultimate responsibility for determining that Jesus should be crucified.

 

It is, of course, a provocative choice; one that is guaranteed to delight some and offend others. But it's not simply designed to amuse or outrage his readers; Nietzsche has good reasons why Pilate captures his respect.

 

For one thing, Pilate displays noble indifference when confronted with the case of Jesus; he simply refuses to care about what is essentially a squabble amongst religious fanatics: "To regard a Jewish affair seriously - he cannot persuade himself to do that." [2]

 

In addition - and this is perhaps the key thing - Pilate is scornful of the concept of truth being advanced (or attested to) by Jesus. 

 

For Nietzsche, the question: Quid est veritas? not only dismisses but destroys the entire basis of what will come to be known as Christianity as well as revealing Pilate to be a man who is unconcerned with the details of the matter brought before him (including the question of whether Jesus is guilty or not guilty of the charges made against him; whether he does or does not deserve to die).

 

Pilate may make a pretty poor governor, but he has an ironic and philosophical disposition and that's why Nietzsche admires him - he's disdainful of the very idea of Truth with a capital T (of truth as something one might not only live by but die for). 

 

This is further revealed, of course, in his symbolic handwashing and the fact that, many years later, when asked about the case he has no memory of the Nazarene [3].

 

Mark Bauerlein provides the perfect paragraph with which to close:

 

"Nietzsche's Pilate, then, isn't a weak administrator trying to finesse a tricky adjudication. He is a cosmopolitan showing his superiority to parochial bickering. His question reduces Christianity from the truth of the world to a partisan contention. He doesn't attack Christianity; he transcends it. [...] His entrance into the theater of the Passion is a virtuous and vigorous interruption of the Christian narrowing of life in all its energy and variety into a single, universal mode of being. Pilate's irony dissolves the historic reality before him into a show. While everyone else in the drama is committed to the outcome, Pilate stands apart, a disinterested observer, an anti-dogmatist wary of truth-seekers and religious types." [4]

 

 

Notes

[1] John 18: 37-38

 

[2] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), §46.

[3] I'm referring here to a fictional account given by Anatole France in his short story "Le Procurateur de Judée" (1892), which portrays an elderly Pilate who has been banished to Sicily.  When asked by a friend if he remembers the trial of Jesus, Pilate thinks for a moment and then replies that he cannot recall the case. An English translation of this tale by Michael Wooff is available as an ebook on Project Gutenberg: click here to read online. 

 

[4] Mark Bauerlein, 'Nietzsche's Pilate', in First Things (August 2019): click here. 

      It is important to note that this most certainly isn't Bauerlein's own position. In fact, he no sooner says this than he slams on the brakes and fully reverses, dismissing modes of philosophical irony - be they pre-Nietzschean like Pilate's, or post-Nietzschean, like Richard Rorty's - as ultimately just sophisticated word games played by those who daren't make the leap into faith.

      There's nothing ironic about Jesus, says Bauerlein, and his Passion makes Pilate's skepticism and cleverness simply appear glib. Those who pride themselves on their curbed enthusiasm and insincerity might mock, but, says Bauerlein, we need to rediscover "forces deeper than words" - forces such as devotion, conviction, and sacrifice ...

 

 

Readers interested in the first Easter post spent with the Anti-Christ, should click here. 

 

For the 2019 version, click here. 

 

And for the 2020 version, click here.     

In Memory of Georgia Brown (1933-1992)

Georgia Brown as seen in A Study in Terror 

(dir. James Hill, 1965)

 

"A carefree, goodtime girl you see / Queen of swell society ..."

 

 

I. 

 

Ever since reflecting on Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century - click here - I've been constantly revising my own list of such figures ... 

 

For whilst I'd be willing to keep Kafka and Freud, I'm not sure about Gershwin or Bernhardt, for example, and would quite happily drop Martin Buber, Louis Brandeis and Golda Meir as these names mean nothing to me. 

 

In fact, come to think about it, I'd probably not miss Gertrude Stein, Albert Einstein, or even the Marx Bros very much either (and one presumes that Groucho Marx wouldn't want to belong on any list of Jewish luminaries that included him).

 

So, retaining Kafka and Freud, who would comprise the other famous eight? 

 

It's tricky: because some Jewish figures - such as Wittgenstein, for example - did not always identify as such, whilst others whom I would have added to my list - such as Larry David - don't qualify because they are still living and Warhol's portraits are exclusively of the dead.    

    

Then there are those like Amy Winehouse who are disqualified from consideration because although born in the twentieth-century, they rose to prominence and died in the early years of this century.  

Or those like Rhoda Morgenstern who are fictional characters and so I suppose don't count (though I'm not sure why).

 

Anyway, I think I can legitimately add the names of Anne Frank, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Derrida and Malcolm McLaren to the list (even if Derrida died in 2004 and McLaren passed away in 2010). 

 

And someone else I think I'm entitled to have on my list and would very much like to add (particularly if I can't have Amy Winehouse), is the singer and actress Georgia Brown ...

 

 

II. 

 

Born Lilian Claire Klot in October 1933 and raised in the East End of London, Klot grew up in a large, extended family of Jewish-Russian descent. Adopting the professional name of Georgia Brown, she established herself as a teenage nightclub singer and recording artist in the early 1950s and soon after made her first TV appearance.   

 

Without ever becoming a huge star, Brown had a varied and successful career in showbiz, including musical theatre; playing Lucy, for example, in the 1956 West End production of The Threepenny Opera at the Royal Court, and Nancy in Oliver! (1960) - Lionel Bart specially adapting the role for the woman he had known since childhood.   

 

From the mid-1960s, Brown concentrated more on developing a screen career - and I personally remember her best for her appearance as a singer at the Angel & Crown in the British 1965 thriller A Study in Terror, in which Sherlock Holmes (played by John Neville) is on the trail of Jack the Ripper [1].

 

Brown treats us to two music hall songs in the film - including the classic Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! [2], about which I have written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

An intelligent and politically conscious woman, Brown also appeared in the highly acclaimed BBC adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Roads to Freedom (1970), for which she sang the theme song La route est dure, and co-created another BBC drama - Shoulder to Shoulder (1974) - which chronicled the struggle for women's suffrage in late-19th and early-20th century. 

  

Brown continued singing and acting throughout the 1980s, but in her later years she limited herself to concerts, cabaret appearances, and guest spots on hit TV shows, including Cheers and Star Trek: The Next Generation (by then she was a permanent US resident).

 

Sadly, Brown died at the age of 58, in London, in July 1992. She was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery (the largest Jewish cemetery in California).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although not much loved or praised by the critics, I like this film; not simply because Georgia Brown is in it, but because it also features a young Barbara Windsor as Annie Chapman (the second of Jack the Ripper's canonical five victims). Readers who are interested can watch the 1965 trailer by clicking here. 

 

[2] Georgia Brown sings her version of 'Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Ay' (accompanied by Ted Heath and His Music) on the album A Little of What You Fancy (Decca, 1962): click here.    

 

 

Reflections on Andy Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (1980)

Andy Warhol: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (1980) 

Top row: Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein and Louis Brandeis

Bottom row: George Gershwin, the Marx Bros, Golda Meir, Sarah Bernhardt and Sigmund Freud

 

 

Warhol, one of my favourite 20th-century artists, was not Jewish and yet, for some reason, I often think of him as Jewish - or Jew-ish, to use a complex and at times controversial term [1].

 

I suppose it's partly because as the child of East European migrants, he would likely have been subject to the same kind of othering within American society during the 1930s, where, as one commentator notes, "cultural and social interactions were built around ethnic identities and tensions" [2]. 

 

This same commentator also claims that despite being Capatho-Rusyn and an orthodox Catholic, Warhol's "closest childhood friends were Jewish, and you can imagine him sharing their sense of being permanent outsiders within the American mix" [3].

 

And indeed, throughout his life and career, Warhol continued to form important relationships with Jews and was clearly sympathetic to anyone who is marked out as queer, different, or alien; "Warhol knew and cared more about alterity, and the difficult quest for cultural inclusion, than most other artists you could name" [4].   

 

So, it should be no surprise that in 1980 Warhol produced a series of ten silk-screened canvases (each 40" x 40") which celebrated some of the most important Jewish figures of the twentieth century.

 

What is surprising, perhaps, is the fact that this work was dismissed or condemned by the critics at the time [5] and remains still, in my view, undervalued - although there has, admittedly, been something of a critical reappraisal in recent years and Jewish art lovers continue to view the work with enthusiasm and pride. 

 

In sum: whilst it would be wrong to claim Warhol was an ardent philosemite - and it should be noted that the idea for the above work was not his, nor did he select the ten figures chosen (or even know who Martin Buber was) [6] - Warhol was certainly not guilty of Jewsploitation, nor jokey antisemitism (hang your head in shame for this last remark, Ken Johnson) [7].

 

I like the series: although if I were asked to compile a list of ten dead Jewish figures that I would like to see portraits of, it would certainly have to include Serge Gainsbourg, Malcolm McLaren and Jacques Derrida ...    

 

Notes

 

[1] See Aviya Kushner, 'What does it mean to be "Jew-ish"? How the term went from warm inside joke to national flashpoint', Forward, (28 December, 2022): click here.

 

[2-4] Blake Gopnik, 'Andy Warhol's Jewish Question', Artnet, (22 November, 2016): click here. 

 

[5] Writing in the New York Times, Hilton Kramer accused Warhol of exploiting his Jewish subjects "without showing the slightest grasp of their significance". The critical consensus was that the work was produced in the cynical knowledge it would fetch a high price from a wealthy Jewish collector.    

 

[6] The series was suggested to him by art dealer Ronald Feldman and the subjects of the portraits were subsequently chosen by Feldman after consultation with Susan Morgenstein, director of the art gallery of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, where the work was first exhibited in March 1980. 

      The series was later exhibited at the Jewish Museum of New York (September 1980 to January 1981) and was first displayed in the UK at the National Portrait Gallery, London, between January and June 2006, where they were described thus by curator Paul Moorhouse in the booklet that accompanied the NPG exhibition:

 

"Magisterial in conception, they advance a new subtlety and sophistication in technical terms. One of their most compelling aspects is the way surface and image are held in a satisfying and fascinating dialogue, generating new depths of meaning and implication. [...] 

      The disjunction between sitter and surface is a visual device that unites the portraits, but the series has a conceptual unity also. Warhol's insistence that the subjects be deceased invests the series with an inescapable character of mortality. The faces of the dead appear as if behind a veneer of modernity. The tension sustained between photograph and abstraction focuses the issue of their celebrity. Probing the faultlines between the person and their manufactured, surface image, Warhol presents these individuals' fame as a complex metamorphosis. The real has been transformed into a glorious, poignant, other-worldly abstraction."

 

[7] See Ken Johnson's piece in The New York Times entitled 'Funny, You Don't Look Like a Subject for Warhol' (28 March 2008), in which he wrote: "What is remarkable about the paintings now, however, is how uninteresting they are. What once made them controversial - the hint of a jokey, unconscious anti-Semitism - has evaporated, leaving little more than bland, posterlike representations."  

 

 

On the Art and Necessity of Coffin Sleeping

Sarah Bernhardt (1880) and Toyah Willcox (1979)

demonstrate the art of coffin sleeping

I.

 

An anonymous reader writes with reference to a recent post which can be read here:

 

 

'I know you sometimes like to present yourself as a "thanatologist", but, really, to celebrate someone such as Sarah Bernhardt - the world's original ham actress - due to the fact they sleep in a coffin is a little pathetic. 

      There's nothing in the least amusing about her morbid behaviour and hysterical exhibitionism and one suspects that Shaw was quite right to identify Bernhardt as ultimately nothing more than an attention-seeking egotist who never explored or revealed anything of the characters she played on stage and film, but simply turned them all into manifestations of her self.'   

 

I have to say, I suspect that's a little unfair on Miss Bernhardt - and it also gives a false impression of the post I wrote in her memory. For whilst I do mention the coffin sleeping - alongside her love for a pet lizard whilst a child - what I actually celebrate is her stoicism, courage, and endurance; for the fact that she dared to live dangerously and love fate, as famously advocated by Nietzsche.     

 

And, whilst we're on the subject, let me further add that I admire Bernhardt for her defiant Jewishness in the face of violent antisemitism. For although she was raised as a Catholic (receiving her first communion in 1856), Bernhardt never denied her Jewish heritage; even when crowds threw stones at her whilst on tour in Russia, or when the right-wing French press attacked her for her passionate defence of Alfred Dreyfus.  

But, to return, briefly, to the subject of coffin sleeping ... 

 

When, in 1880, she allowed herself to be photographed stretched out in a coffin with her eyes closed and covered in flowers - a coffin in which she would also relax when learning her lines (perhaps fearful that she might one day die on stage) - Bernhardt undoubtedly knew this would add to her reputation [1]. 

 

And one suspects that - almost a hundred years later - the English singer and actress Toyah Willcox was also very aware that she'd be able to grab some headlines by claiming to sleep in a coffin, although, in her case, one suspects she genuinely did so in order to keep warm at a time when her restricted financial means meant she had no bed to sleep in at the South London warehouse she was squatting [2]. 

 

For sleeping in a coffin is certainly preferable to sleeping on a cold concrete floor and poverty, rather than a desire for publicity, is more often the reason why people resort to this practice. Indeed, one is reminded of the fact that the first homeless shelters which opened in 19th-century London were known as coffin houses ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Operated by the Salvation Army, these institutions were established primarily to provide food and assistance. But, uniquely, the poor and destitute would also be allowed to sleep in a coffin-shaped wooden box and generously provided with a tarpaulin with which to cover themselves. 

 

Although such places sound grim and, indeed, were grim - they proved to be very popular and remained in operation into the early 20th-century. Supporters of coffin houses argued that not only were the homeless able to find rest, but they were also afforded the chance to find God - provided they had the fourpence admission fee ...    

 

 

 Men preparing for another night's kip 

in a coffin house (c. 1900)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Having said that, however, Bernhardt did seem to have a taste for the morbid and macabre, even once visiting the Paris morgue in order to learn how better to feign the signs of death.  

 

[2] See the interview with Titbits (Nov 1981) in which Miss Willcox discusses why she slept in a coffin: click here.  

 

 

In Memory of Sarah Bernhardt (1844 - 1923)

Sarah Bernhardt (aged 21) 

Photo by Félix Nadar (1865)

 

"Mon vrai pays est le plein air et ma vocation est l'art sans contraintes."

 

 

I. 

 

It's strange, but there are some figures who, in theory, should hold a special interest to me, but about whom I know embarrassingly very little. And the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who died on this day 100 years ago, is one such figure ...

Famously described by Oscar Wilde as divine, a 63-year-old Bernhardt even managed to capture the heart of a young D. H. Lawrence in 1908, when appearing on the English stage as part of a twenty day, sixteen city tour of Great Britain and Ireland:

 

"Sarah Bernhardt was wonderful and terrible. [...] Oh, to see her, and to hear her, a wild creature, a gazelle with a beautiful panther's fascination and fury, laughing in musical French, screaming with true panther cry, sobbing and sighing like a deer sobs, wounded to death, and all the time with the sheen of silk, the glitter of diamonds, the moving of men's handsomely groomed figures about her! She is not pretty - her voice is not sweet - but there she is, the incarnation of wild emotion which we share with all live things, but which is gathered in us in all complexity and inscrutable fury. She represents the primeval passions of woman, and she is fascinating to an extraordinary degree. I could love such a woman myself, love her to madness; all for the pure, wild passion of it." [1]

 

 

II. 

 

Clearly, then, Bernhardt - the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish courtesan who had numerous lovers amongst the wealthy Parisian elite - was one of those wonder-women who seem to seduce, bewitch, or scandalise everyone they encounter. 

 

And, the more I read about her - or the more I look at beautiful old photos of Miss Bernhardt, particularly those taken when she was still very young and with a mass of curly black hair  - the more I start to understand and appreciate why that would be. 

 

I love the fact, for example, that as a child being educated at a convent, she outraged the nuns by performing a Christian burial, with full procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard. And I love the fact also that a century before the world had ever heard of Toyah Willcox, Miss Bernhardt chose to sometimes sleep in a satin-lined coffin.   

 

Arguably, Bernhardt even has something free spirited about her that Nietzsche (who was born in the same month and year) would admire, as this quotation demonstrates:

 

'I passionately love this life of adventures. I detest knowing in advance what they are going to serve at dinner, and I detest a hundred thousand times more knowing what will happen to me, for better or worse. I adore the unexpected.' [2]

 

That's pretty much the philosophy of amor fati and living dangerously in a nutshell, is it not? 

 

She also had that most Nietzschean of virtues: endurance ... For here was an actress who didn't just break a leg, she actually lost a leg due to gangrene in 1915 (when aged 70), but still returned to the stage at the first opportunity and performed for French soldiers fighting on the Western Front.

 

Right until the very end, she also continued to entertain guests at home, - including Colette, who described being served coffee by a living legend:

 

"'The delicate and withered hand offering the brimming cup, the flowery azure of the eyes, so young still in their network of fine lines, the questioning and mocking coquetry of the tilted head, and that indescribable desire to charm, to charm still, to charm right up to the gates of death itself.'" [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Blanche Jennings (25 June 1908), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 59. 

      It is interesting to note that Lawrence was forty-years younger than Sarah Bernhardt when he wrote this letter. Later, he issues a warning to his new friend Miss Jennings: 

      "Take care about going to see Bernhardt. Unless you are very sound, do not go. When I think of her now I can still feel the weight hanging in my chest as it hung there for days after I saw her. Her winsome, sweet, playful ways; her sad, plaintive little murmurs; her terrible panther cries; and then the awful, inarticulate sounds, the little sobs that fairly sear one, and the despair of death; it is too much in one evening." 

      It is also interesting to note that a 28-year-old Sigmund Freud was also smitten by Sarah. After seeing her perform the title role in Victorien Sardou's melodrama Théodora (1884), he sent his long-suffering fiancée, Martha Bernays, a scene-by-scene account of Bernhardt's performance, concluding that she was a remarkable creature: "Her caressing and pleading, the postures she assumes, the way she wraps herself around a man, the way she acts with every limb, every joint - it's incredible!" 

      See the Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, ed. Ernst L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern, (Hogarth Press, 1961), pp. 178-82.  

      But of course, Bernhardt also had her critics, including Shaw, Turgenev, and Chekov - but I'm writing here to praise Sarah, not to bury her. 

[2] Quoted in Hélène Tierchant, Sarah Bernhardt: Madame 'quand même', (Éditions Télémaque, 2009), pp. 210-211. Unknown translator.

 

[3] Quoted by Cornelia Otis Skinner in Madame Sarah, (Houghton, 1967), p. 330. 

 

 

Special (from beyond the grave) bonus - Sarah Bernhardt reciting a poem by Victor Hugo (Paris, 1903): click here. 

 

For a follow up post to this one on the art and necessity of coffin sleeping, click here.

 

Merci à Sophie pour la suggestion de cet article.

How the Metaverse Reduces Us All in Stature

As Paul Murray's waist chopped avatar soon discovers:

 "The greatest poverty is not to live

In a physical world ..." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

My friend Catherine, who has an academic interest in the topic of torture and capital punishment, will doubtless know that one of the favoured methods of execution in ancient China involved the condemned being cut in two at the waist by someone wielding a very large blade.

 

Thankfully, in the modern world this practice has been abolished - unless performed by a surgeon as a life-saving last resort [2].  

However, if you ever decide to enter the so-called metaverse - an immersive virtual environment - you may be shocked to find yourself (or, more precisely, your avatar) without legs, genitals, buttocks, or anything else below the waist, having effectively been given a digital hemicorporectomy the moment you don your VR headset. 

 

That's certainly the case in Mark Zuckerberg's derisible first attempt to establish a techno-utopia, despite his investing huge - HUGE - sums of money [3] in a project which the Facebook founder sincerely believes to be the future for human interaction and digital socialization.    

 

Known as Horizon Worlds, it's been described as a desperately sad and lonely space; like an abandoned shopping mall or theme park. Certainly not the kind of 3D cartoon world anyone would willingly choose to hang out in for very long - even if they are eventually promised legs! [4] 

 

 

II. 

 

"It's hard", writes Paul Murray, "not to read the fact that half of you disappears when you enter Horizon Worlds as symbolic somehow ..." [5]. 

 

That's true: and what it's symbolic of is (i) once you enter the metaverse there's no running away and (ii) Zuckerberg wants us to exchange the sheer intensity of lived experience - the full-life of the body, it's forces, flows and desires - for the mere simulation of such. 

 

D. H. Lawrence was alert to the danger of this almost a century ago: 

 

"The body feels real hunger, real thirst, real joy in the sun or the snow, real pleasure in the smell of roses or the look of a lilac bush; real anger, real sorrow, real love, real tenderness, real warmth, real passion, real hate, real grief. All the emotions belong to the body, and are only recognised by the mind." [6] 

 

Today, to paraphrase Lawrence, many people live and die without having had any real thoughts, feelings or experiences, even if they've spent many long hours chatting on social media or hanging out in a virtual reality. 

 

For they've effectively been cut off at the waist and become creatures for whom everything is in the head and "whose active emotional self has no real existence, but is all reflected downward from the mind" [7].   

 

Mark Zuckerberg likes to present himself as a liberator, but really he's just another executioner ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Wallace Stevens, 'Esthétique du Mal', in Collected Poems and Prose, ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson, (The Library of America, 1997), p. 286.  

 

[2] Hemicorporectomy - or trans-lumbar amputation as it is also known - is an extremely rare (and extremely radical) procedure, used, for example, to stop the spread of aggressive cancers in the spine and pelvic region, or other uncontainable conditions. Apparently, the key to surving such surgery is having sufficient emotional and psychological maturity to cope - as well as the physical resources to undergo intensive rehab. So not for everyone then - and certainly not for me (even having eyestrain or a toothache makes me ponder if it wouldn't be better to be dead).      

 

[2] In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Farhad Manjoo reports that Zuckerberg has invested staggering sums in his metaverse project; tens of billions of dollars in just a couple of years. See 'My Sad, Lonely, Expensive Adventures in Zuckerberg's V. R.' (4 Nov 2022): click here.     

 

[3] Meta promises that its Horizon avatars will be getting legs sometime this year, so you'll not just have to float around with half your body missing. (Apparently, legs that move in concert with the user are very hard to get right in virtual reality systems, but the technical engineers are working on the problem.)

[4] Paul Murray, 'Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse? Searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg’s deserted fantasyland', New York Magazine (13 Mar 2023): click here for the online version in Intelligencer.

 

[5-6] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 311. 

 

On Natural Evil

What fresh hell is this that befalls us?

 

 

I. 

 

A reader writes:

"I enjoyed your recent short post on flowers and the question of evil [1], though I'm not sure I share your conclusions regarding the natural world, which, surely, is neither moral nor immoral and cannot therefore be branded either benevolent or malevolent, lacking as it does any purpose or intent." 

 

Now, it is of course correct to say that evil - when considered from a moral perspective - always results from the intentions or wilful negligence of an agent (be it a man, god, or demon). 

 

However, evil as understood within the concept of natural evil is a state of affairs that occurs without the need for agency; this might be a relatively minor thing such as toothache, or a cataclysmic cosmic event such as the asteroid strike that led to the extinction of most plant and animal life on Earth sixty-six million years ago.

Even if one prefers not use the term evil in relation to natural processes and events, nevertheless the phrase natural evil is well-established within theological and philosophical circles and many of those who suffer from the appalling consequences of such processes and events almost invariably describe them as evil (even if there is no one to blame) - just ask the dinosaurs.   

 

 

II.

 

I suppose if I have a penchant for the term evil, it's mostly due to some of the authors I privilege; Sade, Nietzsche, Bataille, Baudrillard, et al. 

 

And if natural evil particularly interests, it's because it reveals the absurd - as well as the tragic and material - nature of existence; i.e., the fact that life bleeds and is only a rare and unusual way of being dead. 

 

Natural evil, we might conclude, is really just another term for inhuman otherness - or, if you prefer, the postmodern sublime (i.e., that which indicates the limits of reason and representation) [2].

 

And I suppose it might be argued that one's love of those writers who stage an aesthetico-conceptual encounter with such in their books, is evidence of the seductive nature of that which induces fear and trembling (i.e., sheer terror) ...   

 

Notes

 

[1] The post referred to is 'All Flowers are Evil' (23 March 2023): click here.  

 

[2] Although this term is primarily associated with the work of Jean-François Lyotard, several other thinkers - including Julia Kristeva and Gilles Deleuze - also took up the philosophical question of the sublime in their work during the late-20th century. Essentially, this was a fundamental engagement with Kant and his idea of Darstellung (i.e., the process through which the imagination confronts rational thought with intuition). 

      Whilst I don't have time to go into detail here, as a reader of Baudrillard more than Lyotard, I tend to find Edmund Burke's understanding of the sublime more interesting than Kant's. For as one commentator notes:

      "Burke makes no [...] grandiose claims for the sublime. He does not stray so far from the alienating terror of the initial encounter with excessive natural violence or vastness. He concentrates on the more troubling physiological and psychological impact of sublimity [...] Put crudely, if for Kant the sublime is ultimately a moral experience, for Burke it remains fundamentally [...] a negotiation with brute power." 

      - See David McCallam, 'The terrorist Earth? Some thoughts on Sade and Baudrillard', in French Cultural Studies, Vol. 23, Isssue 3, (July, 2012), pp. 215-224. Lines quoted above are on p. 218. To read this essay online click here, or go to: DOI:10.1177/0957155812443202   

 

All Flowers are Evil (Even Lilies of the Valley)

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis)

Photo by Ivar Leidus on Wikimedia Commons

 

 

A reader writes:

 

"I was shocked to discover from a recent post on Torpedo the Ark that even innocent-looking daffodils are highly toxic, containing as they do the alkaloid poison lycorine [1]. Does this suggest, do you think, that Nature is not only inherently dangerous, but evil?"   

 

That's an interesting question; one that has exercised theologians for millennia. 

 

And I have to admit, I rather like the (Gnostic) idea of a material universe that is fundamentally imperfect; the creation of a malevolent demiurge, rather than a Supreme Being who is wholly Loving and Good. 

 

For it seems to me that it is solely in such a universe that colourful, perfumed and, yes, sometimes poisonous flowers blossom, only then to fade and pass away with transient loveliness. 

 

For whilst in an Ideal Heaven, flowers are colourless, odourless and everlasting [2], it is only in a world that knows death - or on the winding path to Hell - that scarlet poppies grow ... [3]      

     

 

Notes

 

[1] The post referred to is the one of 16 March 2023 entitled 'Continuous as the Stars That Shine': click here. 

      Without wishing to shock my anonymous correspondent still further, it may interest them to know that many flowering plants commonly found in UK gardens - not just daffodils - are in fact poisonous; this includes my mother's favourite, lily of the valley, which, whilst loved for its delicate scent, is extremely toxic due to a high concentration of cardiac glycosides. Even the ever-popular hydrangea contains small amounts of cyanide.   

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144. 

      Commenting on the Heaven dreamed of by those who long for the end of the actual world, Lawrence writes: "How beastly their New Jerusalem, where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness."     

 

[3] See the earlier post 'Little Hell Flames: On D. H. Lawrence's Poppy Philosophy' (29 May 2021): click here.  And see also the even earlier post, 'Fleurs du Mal' (25 April 2015): click here. 

Arborcide in the U. K.

Jamie Reid: Anarchy in the U. K. flag design 

for the Sex Pistols first single on EMI (1976) 

Reimagined by Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I.

 

An anonymous reader writes:

"I was disappointed to see you buying into lazy eco-propaganda in a recent post [1] concerning the multi-million redevelopment of Plymouth city centre. As a resident, I can assure you that this revamp is not only necessary to ensure the future of the city, but long overdue. 

      It's unfortunate that a number of trees have had to be removed. But, as you mention in the post, the council have pledged to replace these and consider a wider planting scheme in the future, thereby addressing the concerns of people like yourself who seem to think that protecting trees and the needs of wildlife matters more than growing the economy and providing people with the urban infrastructure that enables them to lead pleasant, prosperous and productive lives."              

 

 

Obviously, I don't want to disappoint anyone. Nor do I wish to buy into lazy eco-propaganda. However, as dendrophile, I think it more than unfortunate whenever a healthy mature tree is cut down. 

 

And, further, I don't believe a word that's spoken by any elected official of any political stripe, be they a humble town councillor or a prominent MP, so any promise to protect the natural environment or plant more trees is one that I view with scepticism to say the very least. 

 

And a report by Tom Heap on the Sky News website this morning nicely illustrates why I am justified in such cynicism, exposing as it does the shocking fact that over half-a-million newly planted trees have been left to die next to a new 21-mile stretch of road between Cambridge and the market town of Huntingdon ...

 

 

II. 

 

As part of a £1.5 billion upgrade of the A14, completed in 2020, National Highways boasted of planting 850,000 saplings to replace the mature trees they destroyed during construction of the new carriageway. 

 

But they have now been forced to admit that almost three-quarters of these saplings have since perished; for it turns out that young trees need care in the early stages of their life if they are to survive and grow, not just sticking in a hole in the ground and then left to look after themselves.        

 

National Highways admit in an internal review that this is an unusually high fatality rate and blame it on poor soil and climate change resulting in extreme heat. 

 

But, actually, this low survival rate is mostly due to the fact that developers - like politicians and city councillors - are only ever concerned with numbers and not with ensuring that the right species of tree - at the right age of development - is planted in the right kind of soil, etc.  

Anyway, National Highways is planning to replant this autumn; at an estimated cost (to the tax payer) of £2.9 million - and they promise to take better care of the trees this time over a five year period: we'll see ...

 

Finally, here's something else that my correspondent might like to consider (or dismiss as simply more eco-propaganda if they so wish):

 

"Across the country, planting rates are [...] running at less than half the 30,000 hectares per year that was pledged by the Conservatives at the last election. So fewer saplings than hoped with troubling survival rates. Bad news for our nature and climate aims." [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The post to which they refer is entitled 'Murder! Murder! Murder! Someone Should Be Angry' (17 March 2023): click here. 

 

[2] Tom Heap, 'Half a million trees have died next to one 21-mile stretch of road, National Highways admits', on the Sky News website (18 March 2023): click here.