The kind of woman D. H. Lawence dreams of ...
Emmanuelle Vaugier as Madison in the hit
American TV series Supernatural [S2/E17]
Emmanuelle Vaugier as Madison in the hit
American TV series Supernatural [S2/E17]
I.
If you ask your dentist about teeth, they'll probably bore on about the different types (incisors, canines, and molars), what their function is (to cut, tear, and crush items of food), where they're located (upper and lower jaws), what they're made of (enamel, dentin, cementum, and pulp) and why it's important for our health and wellbeing to take care of our teeth and gums (prone as they are to decay and disease).
Perhaps, if they really know their stuff, your dentist might even give you an insight into the evolutionary history of hominid teeth and their changing morphology. But mostly they'll just want you to upgrade your dental plan or agree to another series of X-rays.
If you ask your dentist about teeth, they'll probably bore on about the different types (incisors, canines, and molars), what their function is (to cut, tear, and crush items of food), where they're located (upper and lower jaws), what they're made of (enamel, dentin, cementum, and pulp) and why it's important for our health and wellbeing to take care of our teeth and gums (prone as they are to decay and disease).
Perhaps, if they really know their stuff, your dentist might even give you an insight into the evolutionary history of hominid teeth and their changing morphology. But mostly they'll just want you to upgrade your dental plan or agree to another series of X-rays.
II.
Ask D. H. Lawrence about teeth, however, and you'll get a very different kind of answer. For although Lawrence wasn't a dentist - he's primarily remembered today (if at all) as a novelist and poet - he did have a fascination with teeth as the instruments of our sensual will.
Ask D. H. Lawrence about teeth, however, and you'll get a very different kind of answer. For although Lawrence wasn't a dentist - he's primarily remembered today (if at all) as a novelist and poet - he did have a fascination with teeth as the instruments of our sensual will.
What does that mean?
It means that their development is controlled from the two great sensual centres below the diaphragm; particularly the voluntary centre: "The growth and the life of the teeth depends almost entirely on the lumbar ganglion."
It means that their development is controlled from the two great sensual centres below the diaphragm; particularly the voluntary centre: "The growth and the life of the teeth depends almost entirely on the lumbar ganglion."
I don't know if that's true or not and don't really care. What interests me more - and what does have basis in scientific fact - is Lawrence's claim that the mouths of modern human beings have become smaller than those of their primal ancestors:
"For many ages we have been suppressing the [...] sensual will [... and] converting ourselves into ideal creatures, all spiritually conscious, and active dynamically only on one plane, the upper, spiritual plane. Our mouth has contracted, our teeth have become soft and unquickened."
Worse, they give us trouble all the time and many people end up having to wear false teeth - a sure sign for Lawrence of an individual who is "spirit-rotten and idea-rotten". In other words, dentures indicate degeneracy.
Perhaps not surprisingly to those who are familiar with his work, Lawrence also relates his dental philosophy to his thinking on race and ethnicity; it is white people who have no room in their little pinched mouths for the healthy teeth possessed by negroes.
The dark-skinned races have wisely resisted the urge to forfeit their flashing sensual power and submit to the self-conscious love-ideal. Lawrence envies them their strong, resistant teeth - as he does their fullness of lips and thickness of nose; these things being indicative to him of the sensual-sympathetic mode of consciousness and the primary centre from which an individual or a people live.
Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he doesn't stop here. Ultimately, even black people don't quite have the gnashers he lycanthropically fantasises: "Where [...] are the sharp and vivid teeth of the wolf, keen to defend and devour?"
Only if we possessed the large teeth of predators - including 2" fangs - would men and women find happiness, says Lawrence.
See: D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 99-100.
He's absolutely bonkers - which is what I think we like about him so much. Always touching on a really salient point, then stretching it into the absurd. Wonder whether our teeth will begin to shrink or become smaller if veganism is maintained as an ideology to combat climate change? Ironically smaller teeth, rather than fangs, would represent a truer survival instinct as they would have adapted due to a change in diet to preserve life, rather than the other way around. All of which now makes me want to listen to 'Taste the Difference' by Ugly Duckling and contemplate a meatshake. In terms of the diaphragm, this is central to a lot of Eastern philosophies, such as breathing in Tai Chi. Wonder where DHL came across these ideas?
ReplyDelete'And think, how the nightingale, who is so shy, makes of himself a belfry of throbbing sound,
ReplyDeleteWhile people mince mean words through their teeth', Lawrence writes in his Pansy, 'Paltry Looking People'.
There's nothing 'bonkers' in having the huge courage Lawrence had, to urge his fellow men and women not to continue shrinking from full 'assertion of life' and from a fuller expression of sensual being.
It's indicative of the mess mankind is in that Lawrence's great fierce vital wisdom can be dismissed as a merely likeable trait of being 'absolutely bonkers' by someone belonging to the Society which exists to celebrate his phenomenal achievement.
Also, Juliette Gellatley, founder of Viva!, and members of Viva! staff will be glad to advise about the virtues of a vegan diet in relation to healthy strong teeth.
P.S.
ReplyDeleteOther expert, qualified nutritionists will similarly disabuse those who have succumbed to 'project fear' and believe that veganism may be inconsistent with healthy vigorous bodies, bones and teeth.
Please don't imagine that vegans don't sometimes lustfully savour and even savage their food. . .tearing at the flesh and seeds of a pomegranite, for example!
Consistent with their greater sensitive awareness for life, the mouth and teeth of vegans are generally more sensuously and appreciatively involved in the intake of food - they go for freshness and colour and vitamin content. Usually, their diet is far more varied and interesting, and is given great consideration.
They are not to be linked to what Lawrence deplores as 'the feeding of corpses.'
In an attempt to put the cat amongst the pigeons - or, rather, the wolf amongst the vegans - I have written a post in reply to these comments:
Deletehttps://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-why-lawrentian-werewolves-are-not_29.html