Richard Lovatt Somers: Notes Towards a Character Study (Part 1)

Detail from 'The Struggle' (1992) 

Garry Shead: D. H. Lawrence Series

etchinghouse.com.au

 

I. 

 

In his Introduction to the Cambridge Edition of Kangaroo, Bruce Steele argues that whilst the novel is "in many respects thinly disguised autobiography", uncritical emphasis on this pervasive element has led to the mistaken assumption that the character Richard Lovatt Somers is identical with Lawrence as narrator, even though "Lawrence as narrator [...] is often sharply distinct from his character Somers and frequently critical of him and his views" [a].  

And that's true - but doesn't go far enough. For I would not only challenge the ridiculous idea that Somers is identical with the narrator, but interrogate also the belief that the narrator can be identified with an Author who resides outside (and above) the text and in whose person is found the very origin of the work and its ultimate truth.       

      

In this post, therefore, I'm concerned only with Richard Somers and not interested in making any attempt to tie Kangaroo as a work of fiction to Lawrence's own memories, foreign travels, political views, or sexual fantasies. As Deleuze says, creative writing that is overly reliant upon autobiography is not only often bad writing, but dead writing; for literature dies from an excess of authorial input just as it does from an overdose of reality.

 

 

II.

 

Richard Somers is a queer fish: a small, foreign-looking, slightly comical figure, with a pale face, dark beard, and an absent air of self-possession that spoke not only of his (in)difference, but innate superiority and sensitivity (as indicated by his Italian suit and brown shoes).

 

His middle name, Lovatt, suggests either something wolfish about his nature, or something rotten; either way, he doesn't like to be cheated by taxi drivers - but then, who does? Nor does he find humorous house names very amusing - but then ...

 

To be fair, Somers could be charming - when he wanted - but mostly he liked to keep himself to himself and not to "speak one single word to any single body" [19] - except Harriett, his wife, "whom he snapped at hard enough" [19]. The thing he hates most of all is "promiscuous mixing in" [36] and informality. 

 

Unfortunately, Somers can't help feeling himself in touch with (and responsive to) others due to the fact he possessed "the power of intuitive communication" [37]. However, despite this, Somers "would never be pals with any man" [38].    

 

Somers was a writer of poems and essays, with an income of £400 a year (i.e., about twice the average wage in 1922). So, whilst not rich, he was able to globe-trot, admiring the local flora whilst despising the natives and forever asking himsef why he had ever bothered to leave England: Somers "wandered disconsolate through the streets of Sydney" [20], longing to be back in London.

 

Still, if the city disappoints, the Australian bush makes a tremendous impression upon him: "Richard L. had never quite got over that glimpse of terror in the Westralian bush" [15]. He was sure a menacing spirit of place had been watching him as he walked amongst the ghostly pale trees. Watching - and waiting to grab him. For as a poet, Somers felt himself "entitled to all kinds of emotions and sensations which an ordinary man would have repudiated" [14].

 

But of course, as the narrator of Kangaroo notes: "It is always a question, whether there is any sense in taking notice of a poet's fine feelings." [15] Or indeed, his prejudices - of which Somers has many; mostly rooted in his snobbishness, such as his dismissal of Australians "with their aggressive familiarity" [21] as barbarians, lacking in class and culture. For Somers, there has to be rule - otherwise there's just a form of irresponsible anarchy and bullying.    

 

"Poor Richard Lovatt wearied himself to death struggling with the problem of himself, and calling it Australia." [28] That's an interesting remark. But what is Somers's problem? I'm not sure - perhaps we'll find out by the end of this character study ... And maybe we'll find out too what lesson it is that Somers thinks the world has got to learn [31] - or why it is he seems so fascinated by the legs of young men in bathing suits on the beach [27]. 

 

But maybe not: maybe Somers will always remain something of an enigma: for it was "difficult to locate any definite Somers, any one individual [...] The man himself seemed lost in the bright aura of his rapid consciousness" [38]. Somers, we might say, is mercurial and light-footed. He's also a reckless chess player; "very careless of his defence" [39], which is odd for someone so guarded in other respects.

 

For a man who, by his own admission, never takes any part in politics, Somers does seem to hold a number of very definite political views; as might be expected of a writer of essays on social and political topics, such as the future of democracy or the fate of capitalism. And his views might best be described as national socialist in character (all that talk of blood and soil), or as a kind of demonic radicalism (all that talk of dark everlasting gods).    

 

Somers also fancies that it's his "own high destiny" [92] to be a leader of men one day and to make some kind of opening in the world. Though, push comes to shove, he can't commit to any cause, party, or movement. Nor even to Benjamin ('Kangaroo') Cooley. Something always stops him; "as if an invisible hand were upon him" [106]. 

 

Thus, whilst Somers might crave living fellowship with others, he does not want affection, love, nor comradeship. For living fellowship, it turns out, is a synonym for the mystery of lordship. That is to say, the thing which the dark races still know:

 

"The mystery of innate, natural, sacred priority [...] which democracy and equality try to deny and obliterate [...] the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority" [107] [b].

 

At other times, however, Somers rejects the human world entirely - and I think I like him best at such moments; when he is filled with cold fury and contempt for mankind and cares only for the dark cold sea, dreaming (in what is perhaps my favourite section of the novel) of becoming-fish: 

 

"To have oneself exultingly ice-cold, not one spark of this wretched warm flesh left, and to have all the terrific, ice energy of a fish. To surge with that cold exultance and passion of a sea thing! [...] No more cloying warmth. No more of this horrible stuffy heat of human beings. To be an isolated swift fish in the big seas, that are bigger than the earth; fierce with cold, cold life, in the watery twilight before sympathy was created to clog us.

      They were his feelings now. Mankind? Ha, he turned his face to the centre of the seas, away from any land. The noise of waters, and dumbness like a fish. The cold, lovely silence, before crying and calling were invented. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, as if it had relapsed away from speech altogether.

      He did not care a straw what [...] anybody said or felt, even himself. He had no feelings, and speech had gone out of him. He wanted to be cold, cold, and alone like a single fish, with no feeling in his heart at all except a certain icy exultance and wild, fish-like rapacity. [...] Who sets a limit to what a man is. Man is also a fierce and fish-cold devil, in his hour, filled with cold fury of desire to get away from the cloy of human life altogether, not into death, but into that icily self-sufficient vigour of a fish." [125]  

 

As Zarathustra might say: Man needs what is most piscean in him for what is best in him ... [c]  

 

 

This series of notes for a character study of R. L. Somers is continued in part two of this post: click here.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Bruce Steele, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. xxiii. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.  

[b] This is, of course, a fantasy of the reactionary imagination and one which I have discussed recently on Torpedo the Ark in terms of natural aristocracy: click here. I also discuss the politics of this passage in chapter 5 of Outside the Gate, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), see pp. 100-126, and will comment further on Somers's politico-theological speculations in part two of this post. 

[c] I'm paraphrasing a famous line written by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - see the section entitled 'The Convalescent'. 

Advance Australia (into Darkness)

The original 1912 drawing for the Australian coat of arms

 

 

Covid mania has sent the entire world crazy in the last two years and many governments have reacted in a senseless and shameful manner. But nowhere is this fascist hysteria in the face of a virus that has killed less than 2,500 of its citizens - the average age of whom is 83 - more astonishing than in Australia ... [a]

 

Astonishing - and depressing - but not surprising to readers familiar with D. H. Lawrence's novel Kangaroo (1923) [b], which offers a brilliant meditation not only on the queer spirit of place Down Under, but the political psychology of the typical Aussie in times of crisis (be it post-War or mid-pandemic).

 

According to Lawrence, whilst the Australian bush is beautiful and endlessly fascinating, so too does it possess something threatening about it [c]. Likewise, whilst Australians seem to be some of the friendliest, most easy-going people on earth - free from much of the formality and uptightness that is said to characterise the British - there's a unique mix of resentment and aggressive familiarity behind their superficial charm.

 

Their fraternal idealism or mateyness is, therefore, something about which one should remain profoundly cautious and in Kangaroo Lawrence "creates and magnifies a sense of subterranean violence ready to burst through the carefree surface of Australian life" [d] that still resonates today as we watch the authorities in God's own country indulge in draconian stupidity with excessive enthusiasm (and popular support).     

 

Who would have thought that a coat of arms bearing a red kangaroo and an emu would one day seem as menacing as one with a lion and a unicorn, or an imperial eagle? 

 

Welcome to 2022 ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Readers who are interested in the official Coronavirus case numbers and statistics for Australia can visit their Department of Health website for daily information: click here.

 

[b] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994). All page references are to this edition of the work that Lawrence wrote (in six weeks) during his hundred day stay in Australia (4 May - 11 August 1922). 

      Interestingly, when Lawrence arrived Down Under: "It was a period when Sydney was again suffering from a bubonic plague scare: a very mild scare, some fifteen cases to a million people, according to the newspapers.* But the town was placarded with notices 'Keep your town clean', and there was a stall in Martin Place where you could write your name down and become a member of a cleaning league, or something to that effect." [48] 

      *The May 3rd edition of the Daily Telegraph, for example, reported twenty-seven cases of plague; seven of which were fatal. 

 

[c] Lawrence tells us that the "vast, uninhabited land" [13] frightened the book's protagonist Richard Somers: 

      "It seemed so hoary and lost, so unapproachable. The sky was pure, crystal pure and blue, of a lovely pale blue colour: the air was wonderful, new and unbreathed: and there were great distances. But the bush, the grey, charred bush. It scared him. As a poet, he felt himself entitled to all kinds of emotions and sensations which an ordinary man would have repudiated. Therefore he let himself feel all sorts of things about the bush. It was so phantom-like, so ghostly, with its tall pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses, partly charred by bush fires: and then the foliage so dark, like grey-green iron. And then it was so deathly still. Even the few birds seemed to be swamped in silence. Waiting, waiting - the bush seemed to be hoarily waiting. And he could not penetrate into its secret. He couldn't get at it. Nobody could get at it. What was it waiting for? 

      And then one night at the time of the full moon he walked alone into the bush. A huge electric moon, huge, and the tree-trunks like naked pale aborigines among the dark-soaked foliage, in the moonlight. And not a sign of life - not a vestige. 

      Yet something. Something big and aware and hidden! He walked on, had walked a mile or so into the bush, and had just come to a clump of tall, nude dead trees, shining almost phosphorescent with the moon, when the terror of the bush overcame him. He had looked so long at the vivid moon, without thinking. And now, there was something among the trees, and his began to stir with terror, on his head. There was a presence. He looked at the weird, white dead trees, and into the hollow distances of the bush. Nothing! Nothing at all. He turned to go home. And then immediately the hair on his scalp stirred and went icy cold with terror. What of? He knew quite well it was nothing. [...]

      But the horrid thing in the bush! He laboured as to what it could be. It must be the spirit of place. Something fully evoked tonight, perhaps provoked, by that unnatural West-Australian moon. Provoked by the moon, the roused spirit of the bush. He felt it was watching, and waiting. Following with certainty, just behind his back." [14]

      I quote this from chapter one at length as a treat for readers unfamiliar with Lawrence's work. Here, he writes in a manner that some might call Lovecraftian. In the final chapter of his novel (XVIII), Lawrence provides another beautiful description of the Australian bush, this time without the sense of horror underneath: see pp. 342 and 353-355.  

 

[d] Bruce Steele, Introduction to Kangaroo, p. xxxii. 

      This becomes clear when, for example, we witness the pleasure that Jack Callcott gets from breaking the heads of his political opponents with an iron bar and boasting of it afterwards to Somers, with "the strangest grin in the world" on his face and "indescribable gloating joy in his tones" [319]. 

 

 

This post is for Novak Djokovic.     

 

  

Invocation of Death

 

Evelyn De Morgan: The Angel of Death (1880)

demorgan.org.uk

 

Sweet, beautiful death, come to our aid. 

Give us a chance to escape this foul prison in which we suffocate. 

Sweet death, assert your power now, for it is time.   

 

 

Death is often personified: sometimes as a deity; sometimes as an angel; sometimes as a robed skeleton, pale horseman, or even as a type of lover who comes with a kiss. But whatever form death is thought to take, it holds out for many not merely the promise of a permanent and irreversible cessation of all biological functions, but the hope of an escape ... 

 

Thus, it's not surprising to discover people invoking death (either for themselves or for others) when life has become a mechanical round that makes it difficult "to know or admit the new creative desires that come upon us" [a], or even get up in the morning without a feeling of extreme weariness: 

 

"We cling tenaciously to the old states, we resist our own fulfilment with a perseverance that would almost stop the sun in its course. But in the end we are overborne." [27]. 

 

That's pretty much how I feel at the moment: overborne (i.e., overcome by emotional pressure and physical exhaustion) and at the point where I'm tempted to invoke death and destruction: "If we cannot cast off the old habitual life, then we bring it down over our heads in a blind frenzy." [27]

 

The hope - which may or may not be justified, may or may not be false - is that:

 

"When we have become very still, when there is an inner silence as complete as death, then, as in the grave, we hear the rare, superfine whispering of the new direction; the intelligence comes. After the pain [...] of our destruction in the old life comes the inward suggestion of fulfilment in the new." [28]

 

Of course, in order to become still in this manner it might be vital that others die first - and not in a poetic-metaphorical manner, but in a prosaic, all-too-literal fashion. It's all well and good giving oneself up to the river of peace that bears us and abiding by the incalculable impulse of creation, but if that river is blocked by those who can no longer fully live, but nevertheless refuse to die and pass into the unknown, then ... 

 

Well, then there's a problem. And although from a conventional moral perspective it seems wrong to wish for the death of others, it is sometimes necessary. Necessary also to acknowledge that "not all life belongs to life" [40], nor does all life progress towards a state of transcendent being; for many old people who live on and on, year after year, there is no possibility of coming to blossom. 

 

They live on the dead body of the past and on the blood of their children, seemingly lacking the strength (the courage, or the desire) for  the impulse of death that would transport them into darkness and absolution. 

 

Their life, says Lawrence, is "a slow lapsing out, a slow inward corruption" [41] and they have their being in dementia and decay. Their mouths may remember how to chew and their bowels may still (with the help of a little lactoluse) pass stools, but they lapse further and further into nullity, dragging those who provide care with them [b].

 

And so one invokes death ...

 

But it's more in desperation than anything else, as I don't actually have much faith in the power of prayer, etc. Indeed, I'm not even sure it does any good in writing posts like this one and thinking of the living dead. For as Lawrence notes: "The thought of them is almost as harmful as their presence." [45] 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press 1988), pp. 25-52. The line quoted from here is on p. 27. Future page references will be given directly in the text.  

[b] This isn't a rare occurrence: there are 1.6 million people in the UK aged 85 and over, many of whom have dementia and require full-time care; something that often falls on to family members. In one of the Pansies, Lawrence writes:

 

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to be old,

we are not going to make way, we are not going to die,

we are going to stay on and on and on and on

and make the young look after us

till they are old.       

 

This sounds terrible. And it is terrible. But, unfortunately, it's also true. Of the 7 million people acting as carers in the UK, 1.3 million are themselves aged 65 or over.

      See 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436. 

 

 

This post is for Heide Hatry with whom I discussed the idea.

 

   

Kiss Me Deadly: Thoughts Inspired by J. G. Ballard's 'Track 12'

Videodrome Lips Art Print designed by ep-pandality 

redbubble.com

 

 

Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is deadlier than poison.

 

 

I. 

 

To press one's lips against those of another human being and then to insert your tongue into their mouth in an act of amorous exploration, has always seemed a rather queer thing to do. 

 

Of course, I'm no philematologist, and I don't know if kissing is an instinctual act of passion or an example of learned behaviour reinforced by poets and filmmakers. But I do think that Freud was right to identify it as a primary form of perversion [a].    

 

And I do think that D. H. Lawrence was right to describe the close-up kiss on screen in terms of obscenity (i.e., a loss of scenic distance) [b]. There's something profoundly unpleasant about an intimate and private act made visible and public - when it is literally in your face.

 

And the sound of smooching can also become disgusting and disorientating when it is recorded, amplified, or in some way mechanically processed - as we discover in J. G. Ballard's short story 'Track 12' [c]. The fact is, there are some sights that should always remain unseen and there are some sounds that should always remain unheard ...

 

 

II.     

 

Ballard's story rather reminds me of one of those written by Roald Dahl that originally formed the basis of the British TV series Tales of the Unexpected (ITV 1979-88); slightly sinister, darkly comic, and with an unexpected sting in the tail.

 

'Track 12' concerns a love triangle between a university professor, Sheringham, his wife, Susan, and her lover, Maxted. The latter, a former athlete, has been invited by Sheringham to his home on the pretext of discussing a potential business deal (although Maxted suspects he is about to be confronted over the affair).   

Throughout the evening, Sheringham insists on playing odd sound recordings of otherwise inaudible sounds amplified 100,000 times and challenging Maxted - fitted out with headphones that have made his ears feel bruised and numb - to guess what they are (one of them is the sound of a pin dropping). 

 

Maxted finds these games infantile and irritating; one man's obsession with microsonics is another man's boring waste of time:

 

"'Some of the records are interesting,' he admitted. 'They have a sort of crazy novelty value, like blown-up photographs of moths' faces and razor blades. Despite what you claim, though, I can't belive microsonics will ever become a scientific tool. It's just an elaborate laboratory toy.'" [91]  

 

Maxted - "a tall fleshy man with a coarse handsome face" [92] - also finds Sheringham a grotesque bore: 

 

"He surveyed Sheringham with as much detachment as he could muster, wondering whether this prim unattractive man, with his pedantry and in-bred academic humour, had any redeeming qualities whatever." [92]  

 

Sheringham insists on playing one last track. Maxted, however, is feeling cold and shivers as a low noise begins to crackle from multiple speakers placed around the patio. As he attempts to reach across the table to help himself to more whisky, he uncontrollably falls back into his chair:

 

"His stomach seemed to be full of mercury, ice-cold and enormously heavy. He pushed himself forward again, trying to reach the glass, and knocked it across the table. His brain began to fade, and he leaned his elbows helplessly on the lass edge of the table and felt his head fall onto his wrists." [93]  

 

This is never a good sign: in fact, it's often a sign one has - as in this case - been poisoned: "'Chromium cyanate. Inhibits the coenzyme system controlling the body's fluid balances, floods hydroxyl into the bloodstream. In brief, you drown'" [93], as Sheringham politely informs Maxted with a sympathetic smile. 

 

He then goes on to reveal his knowledge of the affair that's been going on behind his back and explains to Maxted how he's been secretly recording the illicit acts of intimacy with numerous hidden microphones. Meanwhile, track 12 continues to play:

 

"Being fed into the patio was a curiously muffled spongy noise, like elastic waves lapping in a latex sea. The rhythms were huge and ungainly, overlaid by the deep leaden wheezing of gigantic bellows. Barely audible at first, the sounds rose until they filled the patio and shut out the few traffic noises along the highway. 

      'Fantastic, isn't it?' Sheringham said. [...] 'These are 30-second repeats, 400 microsens, amplification one thousand. I admit I've edited the track a little, but it's still remarkable how repulsive a beautiful sound can become.'" [94]

 

Fearing that the drugged and dying Maxted will never guess what it is he's listening to, Sheringham gives him a clue: 

 

"'Last Saturday, just after midnight, you and Susan were lying back in this same chair. [...] The wind is your own breathing, fairly heavy at the time, if I remember; your interlocked pulses produced the thunder effect.'" [94]

 

But it's no good: Maxted is too far gone to answer. Watching as his rival "drifted in a wash of sound" [94], Sheringham pumps up the volume and bellows in his rival's ear: 

 

"'Maxted, can you hear the sea? Do you know where you're drowning?' [...] 

      'In a kiss!' Sheringham screamed. 'A kiss!'" [95]

  

 

Notes

 

[a] In his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1916-17), Freud reminds readers that the mouth is the entrance to the digestive tract and not a sex organ per se. Thus, even a kiss between the most respectable married couple who pride themselves on leading a normal love life might be described as a perverse act, since it consists in the bringing together of the oral erotogenic zones instead of the genitals.

 

[b] In his essay 'Pornography and Obscenity', Lawrence claims that "the most obscene painting on a Greek vase [...] is not as pornographical as the close-up kisses on the film". See Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 253. 

      See also Lawrence's poem 'When I went to the film', in The Complete Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 385, and Lawrence's 1928 painting Close-Up (Kiss), in D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, Introduction by Keith Sagar, (Chaucer Press, 2003), p. 58. Prints of this artwork are available to buy on pixels.com in a variety of formats: click here. 

 

[c] 'Track 12' first appeared in the April 1958 edition of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds (Vol. 24, No. 70). Readers can find it in several different collections of Ballard's short stories, including Passport to Eternity (1963), The Overloaded Man (1967), and The Venus Hunters (1986). It is also in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 90-95, and it's this edition that page numbers given in the post refer to. 

      Interestingly, the story was adapted for screen by Harold Pinter and a short film (22 mins), directed by Joseph Losey, was made in 1967, featuring Stanley Baker (as Maxted), Dirk Bogarde (as Sheringham), and (an uncredited) Julie Christie (as Susan), whose puckered lips fill the screen at the film's deadly climax (a scene which, according to Mark Bould, had a profound influence on David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983)).  

     

 

Musical bonus: 'Kiss Me Deadly', written by Billy Idol and Tony James, from the album Generation X (Chrysalis, 1978): click here. Or, to see Generation X in action, click here. 

Manhole 69

 And above us all fluorescent tubes shall hang ...

  

I. 

 

'Manhole 69' is not, as far as I know, the name of gay sex club (though maybe it should be). 

 

It is, rather, the title of a short story by J. G. Ballard [a], concerning a medical experiment in which three volunteers have their brains tampered with so that they can exist without sleep and thus be able to live life 24/7, rather than spend a third of it as an invalid snoring their way through "'an eight-hour peepshow of infantile erotica'" [68], as the doctor in charge of the research puts it.

 

This same doctor - Dr. Neill - is convinced that his work marks a crucial evolutionary advance for man as a species [b]. As he tells his young colleague, John Morley:

 

"'None of you realize it yet, but this is as big an advance as the step the first ichthyoid took out of the protozoic sea 300 million years ago. At last we've freed the mind, raised it out of that archaic sump called sleep, its nightly retreat into the medulla. With virtually one cut of the scalpel, we've added twenty years to those men's lives.'" [67-68]

 

Unfortunately, total wakefulness soon proves to be a nightmare. Because sleep, of course, and the chance to dream, is more than "'an inconvenient symptom of cerebral anoxaemia" [69]. Nor is it merely a form of idleness - i.e., a vice or moral failing - as some neoliberals seem to believe; the sort of fanatics who pride themselves on being able to get by on as little as three or four hours sleep a night.

 

Sleep is vital to our health and wellbeing. For if nothing else, as Morley points out, sleep gives us the chance to switch off and escape: "'Maybe you need eight hours off a day just to get over the shock of being yourself'" [69] and to prevent you becoming like a waxwork dummy with open, unblinking eyes set in faces with "the empty, reflexless look of psychic zero" [87], which is what happens to Bobby Lang and his two fellow test subjects. 

 

As Morley concludes:

"'Continual consciousness is more than the brain can stand. Any signal repeated often enough eventually loses its meaning. Try saying the word 'sleep' fifty times. After a point the brain's self-awareness dulls. It's no longer able to grasp who or why it is, and it rides adrift. [...] 

      The central nervous system can't stand narcotomy.'" [87]

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, the negative consequences of sleep deprivation in the name of a life lived to the max have recently been explored by several cultural commentators and political theorists, including Byung-Chul Han in The Burnout Society (2015), a work I discussed on Torpedo the Ark a couple of months ago: click here. 

 

Readers might also be interested in 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2014), a work in which Jonathan Crary also develops the argument that by expanding market values into every aspect of life and allowing consumer capitalism to operate around the clock, we have fatally submitted to a form of torture and compromised our own physical and mental wellbeing. 

 

As the author notes:

 

"Behind the vacuity of the catchphrase, 24/7 is a static redundancy that disavows its relation to the rhythmic and periodic textures of human life. It connotes an arbitrary, uninflected schema of a week, extracted from any unfolding of variegated or cumulative experience. [...] A 24/7 environment has the semblance of a social world, but it is actually a non-social model of machine performance and a suspension of living that does not disclose the human cost required to sustain its effectiveness. [...] An illuminated 24/7 world without shadows is the final capitalist mirage of post-history [...]" [c]  

 

Crary suggests that sleep - as a restorative withdrawl that is intrinsically incompatible with the 24/7 world of neoliberalism - might provide a possible form of resistance and a refusal of the fascist imperative to always be wide awake [d]. 

 

He writes:

 

"In its profound uselessness and intrinsic passivity, with the incalculable losses it causes in production time, circulation, and consumption, sleep will always collide with the demands of a 24/7 universe. The huge portion of our lives that we spend asleep, freed from a morass of simulated needs, subsists as one of the great human affronts to the voraciousness of contemporary capitalism. [...] Sleep poses the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of profitability, and thus remains an incongruous anomaly and site of crisis in the global present [...] it frustrates and confounds any strategies to exploit or reshape it. The stunning, inconceivable reality is that nothing of value can be extracted from it." [e]. 

 

Concluding:

 

"Sleep is an irrational and intolerable affirmation that there might be limits to the compatibility of living beings with the allegedly irresistable forces of modernization." [f] 

 

In other words - and as Heidegger might say - Nur ein langes Nickerchen kann uns retten ...           

 

Notes

 

[a] 'Manhole 69' was originally published in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds in 1957. It was then included in the collection Chronopolis and Other Stories, (Putnam Publishing, 1971). Page numbers given in this post refer to the tale as it appears in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 56-89. 

      The title, by the way, refers to a small narrow room or cubicle, without windows, and with just a solitary bright light shining from behind a steel grille in the ceiling; a place where it's always 3 a.m. After a while, it's easy to imagine the walls closing in ever closer. 

      Readers might also note that prisoners subjected to sleep deprivation - a form of torture endured by many victims of extrajudicial rendition - are often confined in rooms lit by high-intensity lamps and so cramped in size that they make it impossible even to lie down.   

 

[b] One of the three test subjects, Robert Lang, buys into this line of thinking, even though, as Morley points out, leaving the seas behind in order to become air-breathing creatures, isn't analogous with eliminating the need for sleep. Interestingly, Lang also subscribes to the view that sleep is a form of pseudo-death that keeps the human psyche orientated towards its own mortality. Eliminate sleep, therefore, "'and you also eliminate all the fear and defence mechanisms erected around it'" [78].  

      Cf. D. H. Lawrence writing in Fantasia of the Unconscious on the relationship between ourselves and the death-realm which is "active every moment of our lives", but particularly whilst we sleep and the individual consciousness is suspended and we lie "completely within the circuit of the earth's magnetism". It is this circuit, according to Lawrence, which removes the deadness (i.e. tiredness) of the body: "For each time we lie down to sleep we have within us a body of death which dies with the day that is spent. And this body of death is removed, or laid in line by the activities of the earth-circuit, the great active death circuit, while we sleep." 

      See Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 177.    

[c] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, (Verso, 2014), pp. 8-9.

 

[d] Readers will doubtless recall that Deutschland Erwache! was one of the Nazi Party's most successful and oft-repeated slogans (taken from a poem by Dietrich Eckart entitled Sturmlied). Contrary to what many people believe, fascism compels to speech and constant activity; it never lets its citizens enjoy a silent night in which they might sleep in heavenly peace and dream their own sweet dreams.

 

[e] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, p. 10-11. 

 

[f] Ibid., p. 13.   

Venus Smiles

Tabita Cargnel: Venus Smiles (2020) [a]

Photo © Dario Des Ciancolini from Vibes Art

 

 

'Venus Smiles' is another amusing short story by J. G. Ballard [b], at the centre of which is a sonic sculpture, commissioned by the tale's narrator - Hamilton - who sits on the Vermilion Sands Fine Arts Committee.

 

The artist responsible for the work, Lorraine Drexel, sounds like an interesting woman, going by Hamilton's description:

 

"This elegant and autocratic creature in a cartwheel hat, with her eyes like black orchids, was a sometime model and intimate of Giacometti and John Cage. Wearing a blue crêpe de Chine dress ornamented with lace serpents and other art nouveau emblems, she sat before us like some fugitive Salome from the world of Aubrey Beardsley. [...]

      She had lived in Vermilion Sands for only three months, arriving via Berlin, Calcutta and the Chicago New Arts Centre. Most of her sculpture to date had been scored for various Tantric and Hindu hymns, and I remembered her brief affair with a world-famous pop-singer, later killed in a car crash, who had been an enthusiastic devotee of the sitar. [...] She had shown us an album of her sculptures, interesting chromium constructions that compared favourably with the run of illustrations in the latest art magazines." [52]   

 

Unfortunately, the piece Miss Drexel produces for the central square of Vermilion Sands isn't quite what Hamilton and other committee members had hoped for; and it certainly isn't to the liking of the specially invited assembly of VIPs and members of the general public who witness its unveiling with a mixture of shock and anger. 

 

Even Hamilton's secretary, describes 'Sound and Quantum: Generative Synthesis 3' as "'nothing but a piece of old scrap iron'" [51] - one that makes an infernal racket as well as an ugly sight:

 

"With its pedestal the statue was twelve feet high. Three spindly metal legs, ornamented with spikes and crosspieces, reached up from the plinth to a triangular apex. Clamped on to this was a jagged structure that at first sight seemed to be an old Buick radiator grille. It had been bent into a rough U five feet across, and the two arms jutted out horizontally, a single row of sonic cores, each about a foot long, poking up like the teeth of an enormous comb. Welded on apparently at random all over the statue were twenty or thirty filigree vanes.

      That was all. The whole structure of scratched chromium had a blighted look like a derelict antenna." [53]   

 

Worse, once the acoustic drape is removed, the sculpture gave out an "intermittent high-pitched whine, a sitar-like caterwauling" [53]. After the furious crowd disperse and an insulted, but amused, Lorraine Drexel has skipped town, (keeping her $5000 fee), it's immediately agreed that the work should be removed. As no one else wants anything further to do with it, it is also decided that Hamilton should keep it:

 

"There was nowhere else to put the statue so I planted it out in the garden. Without the stone pedestal it was only six feet high. Shielded by the shrubbery, it had quietened down and now emitted a pleasant melodic harmony, its soft rondos warbling across the afternoon heat." [54]

 

Unfortunately, Hamilton's problems with the sculpture have only just begun ... A week or so later, Carol, Hamilton's secretary, notices that the thing is not only moving but changing shape. Further, it's rapidly expanding in size and beneath the surface rust Hamilton detects "a bright sappy glint" [56], as if the sculpture were alive, like some kind of strange tree coming into bud:

 

"Poking through the outer scale of chrome were a series of sharp little nipples. [...]

      Carefully I examined the rest of the statue. All over it new shoots of metal were coming through: arches, barbs, sharp double helixes, twisting the original statue into a thicker and more elaborate construction." [56] [c] 

Of course, Hamilton has the option to just chop this musical monster down. But he is curious to see how big it will grow. The answer is very big: and even after it eventually collapses under its own weight and "lay on its side in a huge angular spiral [...] like the skeleton of a futuristic whale" [58], its growth rate continued to accelerate. 

 

Thus, Hamilton is obliged to seek a solution in his tool shed: "Using the hacksaw, I cut off a two-foot limb and handed it to Dr. Blackett, an eccentric but amiable neighbour who sometimes dabbled in sculpture himself." [59]

 

The latter speculates (in a pseudo-scientific manner) about how the sculpture is managing to grow: "I imagine it's rapidly synthesizing an allotropic form of ferrous oxide. In other words, a purely physical rearrangement of the constituents of rust." [59] This might not be very plausible, but Hamilton's only other idea is that, before she left, Lorraine Drexel "had set some perverse jinx at work within the statue, a bizarre revenge on us all for deriding her handiwork" [58]. 

 

The good doctor is convinced that the process will soon reach a natural conclusion. However, the next morning Hamilton wakes up to find the thing breaking through his bedroom window and spreading across his garden: "It sounded as if a complete orchestra were performing some Mad Hatter's symphony out in the centre of the lawn." [60] 

 

At this point, Carol insists that Hamilton take up his hacksaw once more:

"The metal was soft and the blade sank through it quickly. I left the pieces I cut off in a heap to one side [...] Separated from the main body of the statue, the fragments were almost inactive [...] By two o'clock that afternoon I had cut back about half the statue and got it down to manageable proportions.

      'That should hold it,' I said to Carol. I walked round and lopped off a few of the noisier spars. 'Tomorrow I'll finish it off altogether.'" [60]

Unfortunately, that night, the monster plant-sculpture again bursts through Hamilton's bedroom window and a gigantic metal helix "hovered like a claw through the fractured pane" [61], its sonic core screaming down at him. The thing had grown back with a vengeance to twice its previous size:

"It lay all over the garden in a tangled mesh, like the skeleton of a crushed building. Already the advance tendrils had reached the bedroom windows, while others had climbed over the garage and were sprouting downwards through the roof, tearing away the galvanized metal sheets." [61]

Hamilton telephones his friend, Raymond Mayo, who comes over with an oxyacetylene torch and, after several hours of hard work, the thing is defeated; all that remains are heaps of scrap metal to be taken away by a local contractor to be melted down. That, though, isn't the end of the story ...

 

Firstly, Lorraine Drexel sues the Fine Arts Committe for destruction of her work and damage to her reputation. After ten months of legal wrangling, it's decided that Miss Drexel should be awarded $30,000. As if that wasn't bad enough, when leaving the newly built courthouse, a funny things happens: Hamilton realises the building is vibrating with a low rhythmic pulse.

 

It transpires that melted down parts from the sculpture had been used in the construction of the court and SQ:GS3 was now spreading and mutating like a virus all over Vermilion Sands . For as Hamilton realises, tiny fragments and molecular memory traces of the statue will be contained within "a dozen other buildings, in ships and planes and a million new automobiles" [65]. 

 

Soon, as Hamilton says, "'The whole world will be singing'" [65] and dancing to the strange abstracted sound of Lorraine Drexel's work ...      

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Inspired by the J. G. Ballard story we are to examine in this post, Venus Smiles is a sound sculpture by the German artist Tabita Cargnel. Consisting of resonating copper tubes suspended in a tensegrity type structure, it also functions as an instrument that can be played by one or more performers, whatever their musical background or competance. Tuned to the particular frequencies of the space in which it resides, Venus Smiles is designed to amplify acoustic properties, create novel interactions, and allow communication in a language beyond words. 

      For more information about her work, readers can visit Tabita Cargnel's website by clicking here. Alternatively, to see Venus Smiles being used as an instrument, visit her YouTube page by clicking here.

[b] See J. G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 51-65. Page numbers given in the above text refer to this edition. 

      'Venus Smiles' was originally entitled 'Mobile' and first published in the June 1957 edition of Science Fantasy (Vol. 8, No. 23). Ballard renamed and rewrote the tale for his collection of short stories  Vermilion Sands (Berkley Books, 1971). 

[c] One is reminded of D. H. Lawrence's poem 'Bare Almond Trees'. But whereras Ballard describes a metal artwork in terms of a living tree, Lawrence describes living trees in winter as possessing black, rusted trunks and looking like "iron implements twisted hideous, out of the earth". 

      See The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 253. The poem can also be read online at allpoetry.com: click here.   

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes (Notes on 'Prima Belladonna' by J. G. Ballard)

Ilaria Novelli (aka Ila Pop): Jane Ciracylides (2020) 

Mixed media painting on cotton paper (23 x 31 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

'Prima Belladonna' (1956) was J. G. Ballard's first published short story [a].

 

It can be found in the 1971 collection Vermilion Sands, which, according to the author, celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality.

 

The three male characters - Harry Miles, Tony Devine, and Steve Parker (the tale's narrator) - don't particularly interest; certainly not in the way that Jane Ciracylides - a singer who performs in a casino lounge at the Vermilion Sands resort - fascinates with her alien good looks:

 

"Whatever else they said about her, everyone had to agree she was a beautiful girl, even if her genetic background was a little mixed. The gossips at Vermilion Sands soon decided there was a good deal of mutant in her, because she had a rich patina-golden skin and what looked like insects for eyes [...]" [b] 

 

As Harry says, whilst he and his two friends voyeuristically perv on Jane as she parades around the apartment opposite "wearing almost nothing except a large metallic hat" [2] and revealing the "sinuous lines of her thighs and shoulders" [2], here is a goddess "'straight out of the primal apocalyptic sea'" [2]. 

 

Harry knows that in order to seduce such a woman, you need to approach her in a shy somewhat hesitating manner: "'Nothing urgent or grabbing.'" [2] This shows a lover's wisdom: for hesitation is the courage to go slowly; to resist the urge to violently seize hold of that which one desires.   

Not that Harry gets to put his hands on Jane. Rather, it's Parker to whom she seems attracted (even though, by his own confession, he is out of her league), after visiting his little shop of singing plants (choro-flora) the next morning and admiring his blooms: 

"She walked over to a bank of mixed ferns and stood looking at them. The ferns reached out towards her and trebled eagerly in their liquid fluted voices.

      'Aren't they sweet?' she said, stroking the fronds gently. 'They need so much affection.'" [5]

 

Reminiscing on their first meeting, Parker recalls: 

 

"Under the black beach robe her skin was a softer, more mellow gold, and it was her eyes that held me. I could see them under the wide-brimmed hat. Insect legs wavered delicately round two points of purple light." [5]

That's a rather disturbing description of Jane's eyes; not so much the two points of purple light at their centre, but the wavering insect legs that surround them. It reminds one of stories that appeared in the English press two or three years ago about a girl in India and a woman in Taiwan who had insects living in their eyes [c]. 

 

Uninterested in the plants Parker initially tries to sell her - a Sumatra Samphire and a Louisian Lute Lily - to make her new apartment feel less lonely, Jane slowly raised her hands in front of her breasts as if in prayer and moved towards the display counter on which stood a rare Khan-Arachnid orchid; "a difficult bloom, with a normal full range of twenty-four octaves" [3], which Parker regards as a fleur du mal.

"'How beautiful it is,' she said, gazing at the rich yellow and purple leaves hanging from the scarlet-ribbed vibrocalyx." [6] 

It's clear that Jane is something of a choro-floraphile - i.e., that her desire is more for the plants than the man. And equally clear is the effect this girl with the insect eyes has on the plants; as she admires the orchid its leaves stiffen and fill with colour:

"She stepped closer to the orchid and looked down into its malevolent head. The Arachnid quivered and the spines on its stem arched and flexed menacingly." [6]

 

And then to Parker's surprise - it sings to her:

 

"I had never heard the Arachnid sing before. I was lisening to it open-eared when I felt a glow of heat burn against my arm. I turned and saw the woman staring intently at the plant, her skin aflame, the insects in her eyes writhing insanely. The Arachnid stretched out towards her, calyx erect, leaves like blood-red sabres." [5] 

 

At the end of the performance, Jane gripped the edge of the vivarium in which the orchid grew and gathered herself: "Her skin dimmed and the insects in her eyes slowed to a delicate wavering." [6] 

 

She offers Parker a $1000 for the plant, which he declines. So she takes a lesser specimen of plant and, before leaving, invites him to come see her perform as a speciality singer at the Casino: "'You may find it interesting.'" [7]

 

Which, along with the entire audience, he does: "The next morning Vermilion Sands hummed. Jane created a sensation." [7] Harry and Tony are as smitten with her as the Arachnid, which Jane comes to visit every morning at the shop; "and her presence was more than the flower could bear [...] instead of running through its harmonic scales the orchid only screeched and whined" [9]. 

 

Jane seemed oblivious to the effect she was having. Finally, Parker tells her that she is causing the Arachnid great distress: "'Your voice may move men to strange and wonderful visions, but it throws that orchid into acute melancholia'" [10]. 

 

Actually, that's not quite the case; the orchid is suffering from a form of erotomania or what the French term amour fou. It both wanted to ravish and annihilate her at the same time. Parkin wonders what would happen were he to leave plant and woman alone together; would they try to sing each other to death? 

 

Eventually, despite all his misgivings about this strange (perhaps dangerous) golden-skinned woman who happily cheats at i-Go [d], Parker makes love to her: "'What's she like?' Tony asked eagerly. 'I mean, does she burn or just tingle?'" [12]

 

Their relationship seems to progress quite nicely:

 

"Sometimes in the late afternoons we'd drive out along the beach to the Scented Desert and sit alone by the pools [...] When the wind began to blow cool across the sand we'd slip down into the water [...]

      On other evenings we'd go down to one of the quiet bars at Lagoon West, and have supper out on the flats, and Jane would tease the waiters and sing honeybirds and angelcakes to the children who came in across the sands to watch her.

      [...] I never questioned myself too closely over my affair  with Jane Ciracylides. As I sat on the balcony with her looking out over the cool early evenings or felt her body glowing beside me in the darkness I allowed myself few anxieties." [12-13] 

 

But all good things must come to an end ... And one night, Parker discovers Jane in his flower store:

 

"The lights had been turned out, but a brilliant glow filled the shop, throwing a golden fire on to the tanks along the counters. Across the ceiling liquid colours danced in reflection. 

      The Arachnid had grown to three times its size. It towered nine feet high out of the shattered lid of the control tank, leaves tumid and uflamed, its calyx as large as a bucket, raging insanely.  

      Arched forwards into it, her head thrown back, was Jane." [14]     

 

 I'll leave it to readers - as Ballard does - to decide what exactly is going on here. But Parker seems to feel Jane is in danger; he runs over and tries to pull her clear. But she pushes his hand away ... 

Harry and Tony arrive on the scene and find their friend Steve sitting on the stairs at the entrance to his little shop of horrors. Although they attempt to enter, Parker holds them back and jams the door shut:

 

"I never saw Jane again. The three of us waited in my apartment. When the music died away we went down and found the shop in darkness. The Arachnid had shrunk to its normal size. 

      The next day it died." [14]

     

 

II. 

 

Of course, some might argue that the orchid was fortunate to meet its destruction in this manner; that the morbid horror of love always ends tragically in ruinous expenditure and that eroticism is a blissful betrayal of the will to self-preservation.

 

Perhaps Ballard's story should be read as an example of a symbiotic relationship in which two species and two strains of love collide, both spiraling together "into a helix of strangely suspended disintegration" and each competing "to exceed the other in mad vulnerability" [e].

 

Having said that, the book ends with Steve Parker warning any choro-florist who happens to own a Khan-Arachnid orchid, to watch out for a golden-skinned woman with insect eyes: "Perhaps she'll play i-Go with you, and I'm sorry to have to say it, but she'll always cheat." [15]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The story first appeared in Science Fantasy, vol. 7, issue 20, (1956).

 

[b] J. G. Ballard, 'Prima Belladonna', in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), p. 1. Future page references given in the text refer to this edition. I'll say more about this 'insects for eyes' remark shortly.  

 

[c] See the case reported in March 2018 of the Indian schoolgirl who, over a ten day period, had sixty dead ants removed from her eyes by a doctor at the local hospital, after complaining to her parents of pain and inflammation: click here. 

      And see the case from April 2019 involving a 28-year-old Taiwanese woman found by doctors to have four tiny sweat bees inside her eye; they were successfully removed (alive) by a doctor, who carefully pulled them out by the legs: click here.      

 

[d] i-Go is a fictional game described in 'Prima Belladonna' as "a sort of decelerated chess"; see The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, p. 1.

 

[e] Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 189.  

 

 

Fox Tales

Photo of a fox in the backgarden 

by Maria Thanassa (2021)

 

 

I. 

 

Despite new laws to prevent animal cruelty coming into force in June as part of the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act, a secretly-filmed video emerged online over Christmas showing a 48-year-old man in Essex killing a fox with a garden fork. 

 

The sickening footage, captured by North London Hunt Saboteurs and passed to ITV News, shows the poor creature emerging from its den and into the jaws of a waiting dog, before then being stabbed repeatedly by the man, who leaves the scene of the crime carrying the dead animal with him.    

 

Essex Police later arrested the man on suspicion of offences under the Hunting Act 2004, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Wild Mammal Protection Act 1996. Whilst initially held in custody, he has now been released under investigation. 

 

A government minister, Zac Goldsmith, has described the incident as grotesque and called for further action to be taken. And indeed, let us hope that the man is given the maximum sentence for animal cruelty of five years and the largest possible fine (though, personally, I would like to see a far harsher punishment inflicted).     

 

 

II.

 

Back in January of this year, I had my own encounter with a fox, who was sitting under a bush in the backgarden, just resting peacefully in the winter sun, looking straight at me. I wasn't sure, but I guessed from its size it was a dog-fox in its prime, with a thick handsome coat of golden-red fur and a snow white belly.

 

For me, it was a magical encounter, as I knew it would be for Maria whom I called to come look - and, indeed, she spoke of nothing else for days afterwards, describing it as her March moment, referencing the queer relationship between fox and woman in D. H. Lawrence's novella 'The Fox' ...*

 

 

III.  

 

Admittedly, March intends to shoot the fox that is carrying off the hens reared on the little farm owned by herself and her friend Banford, but he is too clever and too quick to let himself be killed by either woman:

 

"The fox really exasperated them both. As soon as they had let the fowls out, in the early summer mornings, they had to take their guns and keep guard: and then again, as soon as the evening began to mellow, they must go once more. And he was so sly. He slid along in the deep grass [...] And he seemed to circumvent the girls deliberately. Once or twice March had caught sight of the white tip of his brush, or the ruddy shadow of him in the deep grass, and she had let fire at him. But he made no account of this." [9-10]   

One evening, however, whilst standing with her back to the sunset, her gun under her arm, and her hair pushed under her cap, March has a revelatory encounter with the fox:

"She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met her eyes. And he knew her. She was spell-bound. She knew he knew her. So he looked into her eyes, and her soul failed her. He knew her, he was not daunted. 

      She struggled, confusedly she came to herself, and saw him making off, with slow leaps leaping over some fallen boughs, slow, impudent jumps. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and ran smoothly away. She saw his brush held smooth like a feather, she saw his white buttocks twinkle. And he was gone, softly, soft as the wind." [10]

 

Gone - but certainly not forgotten and, after supper, she went out to look for the fox:

 

"For  he had lifted his eyes upon her, and his knowing look seemed to have entered her brain. She did not so much think of him: she was possessed by him. She saw his dark, shrewd, unabashed eye looking into her, knowing her. She felt him invisibly master her spirit. She knew the way he lowered his chin as he looked up, she knew his muzzle, the golden brown, and the greyish white. And again, she saw him glance over his shoulder at her, half inviting, half contemptuous and cunning." [11] 

It is several days before she mentions anything of all this to Banford: and, several months later, she is still (unconsciously) dominated by thoughts of the fox:

"Whenever she fell into her odd half-muses, when she was half rapt, and half intelligently aware of what passed under her vision, then it was the fox which somehow dominated her unconsciousness, possessed the blank half of her musing. And so it was for weeks, and months. No matter whether she had been climbing the trees for apples, [...] digging out the ditch from the duck-pond, or clearing out the barn, when she had finished, or when she straightened herself, and pushed the wisps of hair away again from her forehead, [...] then was sure to come over her mind the old spell of the fox, as it came when he was looking at her. It was as if she could smell him, at these times. And it always recurred, at unexpected moments, just as she was going to sleep at night, or just as she was pouring the water into the teapot, to make tea - there it was, the fox, it came over her like a spell." [12]  

 

One day, when a young stranger (Henry Grenfel) appears at her door, March (fatefully) identifies him with the fox (which, poor creature, Henry will later shoot and skin):

 

"Whether it was the thrusting forward of the head, or the glisten of fine whitish hairs on the ruddy cheek-bones, or the bright, keen eyes, that can never be said: but the boy was to her the fox, and she could not see him otherwise." [14]

 

On the night of Henry's arrival March has the following vivid dream:

 

"She dreamed she heard a singing outside, which she could not understand, a singing that roamed round the house, in the fields and in the darkness. It moved her so, that she felt she must weep. She went out, and suddenly she knew it was the fox singing. He was very yellow and bright, like corn. She went nearer to him, but he ran away, and ceased singing. He seemed near, and she wanted to touch him. She stretched out her hand, but suddenly he bit her wrist, and at the same instant, as she drew back, the fox, turning round to bound away, whisked his brush across her face, and it seemed his brush was on fire, for it seared and burned her mouth with great pain. She awoke with the pain of it, and lay trembling as if she were really seared." [20]

 

Now, you might think that March would take this as a warning against involvement with Henry, the werefox with an invisible smile. But no - reader, she married him! 

 

Still, that's another story and not really my concern in this post where I simply wanted to make the point that human-animal encounters can be truly inspiring and leave a tremendous impression upon us, if only we allow the spirit of the animal to enter into communion with our own. 

 

Thus, if you are ever lucky enough to encounter a fox close up, then I suggest that rather than reach for a gun or a garden fork - or even a camera - you just give yourself up to the moment before going your separate way in peace and gratitude.            

 

 

* D. H. Lawrence, 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 5-71. All page references given in the text refer to this edition.