From the Soil Beneath Our Feet to the Iron in Our Soul (Another Open Letter to Heide Hatry)

 The biosphere cannot exist without exchange 

and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere

 

I. 

 

My friend Heide recently sent me a link to an article by George Monbiot, a writer known for his environmental and political activism, which powerfully argued the case for soil: 

 

"Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It's as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it." [1] 

 

Pretty much, I agree with what he says and share his astonishment for the wonder of soil - that pedolithic mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life on Earth. It's amazing to realise that even a small handful of soil contains thousands of tiny creatures, millions of bacteria, and a complex network of fungal filaments. 

 

And, as Monbiot writes, "even more arresting than soil's diversity and abundance is the question of what it actually is" - not just a ground-up rock and dead plants as many people think - but a "biological structure built by living creatures to secure their survival". 

 

Expanding on this theme, he writes:

 

"Microbes make cements out of carbon, with which they stick mineral particles together, creating pores and passages through which water, oxygen and nutrients pass. The tiny clumps they build become the blocks the animals in the soil use to construct bigger labyrinths. [...] Bacteria, fungi, plants and soil animals, working unconsciously together, build an immeasurably intricate, endlessly ramifying architecture that [...] organises itself spontaneously into coherent worlds." 

 

Monbiot concludes: 

 

"Soil might not be as beautiful to the eye as a rainforest or a coral reef, but once you begin to understand it, it is as beautiful to the mind. Upon this understanding our survival might hang."

 

And that, dear Heide, is where my problem with Monbiot begins ... 

 

 

II. 

 

For suddenly it becomes clear that, ultimately, the destruction of soil only concerns him because it threatens human existence; the "thin cushion between rock and air" should be valued because it supports mankind and allows Monbiot to continue his comfortable middle-class life in Oxford. 

If Monbiot and his fellow greens were genuinely concerned with the preservation of the soil and really believed that the future is underground, then they would advocate for (voluntary) human extinction [2] - not just new farming techniques. Like Rupert Birkin, they would see that we have become an obstruction and a hindrance to the process of evolution and that only man's self-extinction will allow life to continue unfolding in inhuman splendour.

 

Monbiot should be encouraged to understand that nature is not our home and that if life matters at all, then every life matters equally; human presence or non-presence doesn't determine the blessedness (or indeed the beauty) of anything. 

 

Not that I'm saying life does possess any intrinsic value; as a philosopher, I'm obliged to affirm the essential truth of nihilism, which, of course, is the truth of extinction [3] and the fact that life is epiphenomenal - a rare and unusual way of being dead, as Nietzsche says [4]. 

 

Even so-called ecophilosophy should do more than simply further human conceit and perpetuate a kind of Gaia-loving vitalism. Its duty and, indeed, its destiny is to acknowledge the fact that the Earth has interests that do not coincide exclusively with the life upon it; as Giorgio Agamben reminds us, the biosphere cannot exist without the chthonic thanatosphere [5].

 

Ultimately, soil only goes down so far and even those strange microscopic organisms that live in the rock deep beneath the surface of the Earth, are no longer anywhere to be found. For ultimately, the Earth isn't alive - it's a solid ball of iron and nickel with a radius of about 760 miles and a surface temperature as hot as that of the sun, surrounded by a molten outer core.  

 

Equally amazing - and just as important - is the fact that iron not only constitutes the soul of our planet, but, along with other metals - such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and zinc - makes up 2.5% of the human body. 

 

As inorganic biochemists like to joke, man cannot live by SPONCH alone ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] George Monbiot, 'The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing - and the key to our planet's future', The Guardian (7 May 2022): click here. 

      See also Monbiot's article from several years back, 'We're treating soil like dirt. It's a fatal mistake as our lives depend on it', The Guardian (25 March 2015). Nice to see him recycling old material in this (environmentaly friendly) manner.

 

[2] See the post 'On Voluntary Human Extinction' (12 Oct 2013): click here. 

 

[3] See Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). And see my post on this book (26 Nov 2012): click here.

 

[4] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109. 

[5] See Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now?, trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113. 

On Chthonic Vitalism 2: In the Etruscan Tombs with Giorgio Agamben

 

Etruscan tombs (Tarquinia)

 

The aim of those who practice philosophy in the Etruscan manner is to learn how to die.

 

 

I. 

 

For D. H. Lawrence, the Etruscans conceived of everything in terms of life - even death [a].

 

But the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees things the other way round; for him, the Etruscans conceived everything in terms of death - even life - and their civilisation was (whilst vital) fundamentally chthonic in character. 

 

This is evidenced by the fact that although the Etruscans chose to build their homes on sites which were ostensibly above ground, they chose to dwell in a more profound sense in the vertical depths: "Hence the Etruscan taste for caves and for recesses dug into the rock, and their preference for tall ravines, gorges, and the steep walls of peperino [...]" [b]

 

Those who visit the tombs, writes Agamben, "immediately perceive that the Etruscans inhabited Chthonia, and not Gaia" [109] and that they had their true being in the underworld - were epichthonioi as the Little Greek would say - and not on the surface of the Earth facing skywards. Agamben writes:

 

"The uniquely subterranean character of these Etruscan spaces can also be expressed, when comparing them to other areas of Italy, by saying that what we are seeing is not landscape as such. The affable, familiar landscape that we can serenely embrace with our gaze and which overruns the horizon belongs to Gaia. In chthonic verticality, however, the landscape vanishes; every horizon disappears and makes way for the nefarious, unseen face of nature." [110] 

 

 

II.

It's not that Lawrence is wrong exactly to stress, as he does, the vitalism of the Etruscans, it's just that he fails to emphasise the chthonic nature of this vitalism. Agamben is spot on to write of this fascinating people with iron in their soul: 

 

"They did not love death more than life, but life was for them inseparable from the depths of Chthonia; they could inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate her countryside only if they did not forget their true, vertical dwelling." [110-111]

 

This is why the tombs hollowed out in the naked rock do more than merely house the dead and allow us to imagine how the Etruscans conceived of the afterlife; they also allow us to more profoundly understand "the movements, the gestures, and the desires of the living people who built them." [111] 

 

The reason that the Etruscans "built and protected the dwellings of their dead with such assiduous care" [110], was because of their "unshakable chthonic dedication (rather than, as one might assume, their chthonic dedication arising from their care for the dead)" [110].

 

They understood - in a way that most modern people do not - that life only exceeds mere existence and flowers into the fourth dimension when it "safeguards the memory of Chthonia" [111]. 

 

In other words, because we are mortal, then confronting our own finitude and learning how to live in the knowledge and the shadow of death is the most vital aspect of being human. As Heidegger says: Dasein is essentially a being-towards-death [Sein-zum-Tode] [c]. 

The Etruscans demonstrated "that there is an intense community and an uninterrupted continuity between the present and the past, and between the living and the dead" [111]. We forget or dismiss our relationship with the underworld, with the realm of matter, with death, at our peril (a point that the New York based German artist Heide Hatry makes repeatedly in her work). 

 

For ultimately, not only must Gaia and Chthonia be understood as inseparable, but the world of the living (the biosphere) "cannot exist without exchange and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere" [111].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the first post in this series on chthonic vitalism - 'In the Tombs With D. H. Lawrence' - click here.

 

[b] Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), p. 110. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, chapter 1.

 

On Chthonic Vitalism 1: In the Etruscan Tombs With D. H. Lawrence

 

Man lives naked and glowing on the surface of the Earth.

Then comes death and he departs into the Underworld.

 

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence was instinctively attracted to the ancient Etruscans for several reasons, not least of all because nobody knows much about them, so he was free to speculate imaginatively and project his own ideas of phallic consciousness upon them. 

 

Indeed, it might be argued that his Sketches of Etruscan Places [a] tell us more about Lawrence and his (anti-Roman, anti-Fascist) political philosophy than about the Etruscans themselves. 

 

But that's okay: for one still discovers much of interest from this trip round the subterranean tombs with Mr Lawrence as our tour guide and, besides, who simply wants object lessons about vanished races?

 

 

II. 

 

And it is, dear reader, into the tombs we must descend. For the Etruscans built their cities of wood and these have "vanished as completely as flowers" [13]. Only the tombs, lying like bulbs underground, remain ...

 

However, fear not, for as subterranean cities of the dead go, the Etruscan one is really quite gay. As Lawrence reminds us, the idea of a gloomy underworld only begins with moral idealism; for nature-loving pagans the afterlife was pretty much more of the same: 

 

"It was neither an ecstasy of bliss, a heaven, nor a purgatory of torment. It was just a natural continuance of the fulness life." [19] 

 

Perhaps that explains why the Etruscan tombs feel so welcoming; the dead left a joyous feeling behind them, which, says Lawrence, is "warm to the heart, and kindly to the bowels" [16]. So there is no need to feel anxious or oppressed, dear reader, as we descend into the Etruscan underworld: 

 

"There is a simplicity, combined with a most peculiar, free-breasted naturalness and spontaneity in the shapes and movements of the underworld walls and spaces, that at once reassures the spirit." [19] 

 

II. 

 

The key thing, however, that we learn from Lawrence's musings on the Etruscans, is that they subscribed to what we might term a chthonic vitalism and extracted their own being out of the dark fissures of the earth that are now sealed to us moderns:

 

"It is as if the current of some strong different life swept through them, different from our shallow current today: as if they drew their vitality from different depths, that we are denied." [56] 

 

Lawrence insists that the Etruscans conceived everything - even death - in terms of life. But, I think it might also be argued that, in a sense, they viewed life (to paraphrase Nietzsche) as simply a rare and unusual way of being dead [b].

 

For it's certainly true, as Lawrence concedes, that the tombs reveal the vivid feeling of delight which the Etruscans experienced when contemplating that mysterious journey out of life and "into the dark of death" [58]; a journey Nietzsche describes as a festive return to the actual [c]. 

 

The Etruscans weren't particularly concerned with the human soul, but with the material forces and powers which produced the human soul "out of chaos, like a flower, only to disappear again into chaos, or the underworld" [122].    

   

And it's this which makes the Etruscans - to me as a thanatologist - of real interest; theirs, as the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben says, was a chthonic civilisation par excellence ... [d]

 

Notes

 

[a] Originally published in 1932 as Etruscan Places, I'm relying here on the 1992 Cambridge edition ed. Simonetta de Filippis, entitled Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays. Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

[b] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109. 

 

[c] See Nietzsche, KSA 9:11 [70].

 

[d] See Agamben's text entitled 'Gaia and Chthonia' in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113. I discuss this work in the second post on the theme of chthonic vitalism: click here.

On Finding Ourselves in a State of Exception (Part 2)

Cover of the Spanish edition 

(Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2020) [a]

We will have to ask ourselves the only serious question that truly matters: where are we now? 

And it is a question we should answer not just with our words, but with our lives too.

 

 

VI. 

 

Another of the great zombie-mantras of the pandemic - again, here in the UK at least - was: Protect the NHS. Indeed, we were expected not only to protect the National Health Service, but love it and elevate it to the status of a religion. 

 

And so Agamben is right to define medicine as the victorious faith of the 21st-century; a cultic practice that posits health (by which it means bare life) above everything else, turning it into a moral obligation: Thou shalt not be sick!

 

But the funny thing is, "the medical religion offers no prospect of salvation [...] the recovery to which it aspires can only be temporary, given that the malignant god - the virus - cannot be annihilated once and for all" [53], mutating into variants as it does. 

 

It is thus the task of philosophers to again enter into conflict with religion: 

 

"I do not know if the stakes will be reignited or if there will be a list of prohibited books, but certainly the thought of those who keep seeking the truth and rejecting the dominant lie will [...] be excluded and accused of disseminating fake news [...] As in all moments of real or simulated emergency, we will again see philosopers be slandered by the ignorant, and scoundrels trying to profit from disasters that they themselves have instigated." [54] 

 

Ecrasez l'infâme! 

 

 

VII. 

 

As readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, I hate Zoom [click here] and I despise the way in which many who should know better - university lecturers, for example - have willingly embraced its use and thus allowed the pandemic to serve as a "pretext for an increasingly pervasive diffusion of digital technologies" [72]. 

 

This has not simply transformed teaching, but effectively negated student life as a form of existence that had evolved over centuries: 

 

"Being a student was, first and foremost, a form of life, one to which studying and listening to lectures were certainly fundamental, but to which encountering and constantly exchanging ideas with other scholarii [...] was no less important." [73] 

 

I agree with that. 

 

And I agree with this: those academics who consent to hold all their classes remotely and comply with the new online order, are the "exact equivalent of those university professors who, in 1931, pledged allegiance to the Fascist regime" [74]. 

 

Those students who really love student life, will oppose the new techno-barbarism and establish their own circles of learning and friendship. 

 

 

VIII. 

 

I also agree with Agamben when he writes that the phrase conspiracy theorist - used to discredit those who refuse to accept the official government narrative repeated by the manistream media - "demonstrates a genuinely surprising historical ignorance" [75]. 

 

Not everything happens randomly or by chance; sometimes events are planned and coordinated by powerful organisations, groups, or individuals. Dismissing anyone who seeks to explain the pandemic by making reference, for example, to the Wuhan Institute, the World Health Organisation, and the pharmaceutical industry, as a conspiracy theorist, is a sign of idiocy. 

 

But where I don't agree with Agamben - even though I hate the thought of mandatory masks - is on the question of the face, which he thinks a uniquely human site of truth: "It is in their faces that humans unwillingly drop their guard; it is the face [...] that they express and reveal themselves." [86] 

 

It is precisely this (metaphysical) privileging of the face that I challenge in a post published way back in 2013: click here. 

 

If I refuse to wear a mask across my mouth and nose, it's because, quite simply, I don't wish to restrict my own breathing - and nor do I want to signal my political conformity (and virtue) via a piece of ridiculous theatre. 

 

But it's not because I have a profound human need to recognise myself and be recognised by others - or a desire to communicate my openness. 

 

 

IX. 

 

In Yōko Ogawa's 1994 sci-fi novel The Memory Police [b], the world is increasingly emptied out as things disappear - including body parts, until, finally, as Byung-Chul Han notes, "there are just disembodied voices aimlessly floating in the air" [c]. 

 

I thought of this as I read the following paragraph in Agamben's book, in a section on the importance of physical contact: 

 

"If, as is perversely being attempted today, all contact could be abolished, if everything and everyone could be held at a distance, we would lose not only the experience of other bodies but also, and above all, any immediate experience of ourselves. We would, purely and simply, lose our own flesh." [101] 

 

But then for those who love to Zoom, that's the ideal is it not; to become ghosts in the machine ...? 

 

X. 

 

Last word to Agamben ...

 

In the Age of Coronavirus, when fear seems to have gripped the hearts of everyone, remember:

 

"No need to lose our heads, no need to let anyone exercise power on the basis of fear or, by transforming an emergency into a permanent state, to rewrite the rules that guarantee our freedom and determine what we can and cannot do." [95]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] I'm using the English edition of Agamben's Where Are We Now?, trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021). All page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.

 

[b] Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police, trans. Stephen Snyder, (Vintage, 2020). 

 

[c] Byung-Chul Han, Preface to Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. viii.

 

 

To go to Part 1 of this post, click here.  

On Finding Ourselves in a State of Exception (Part 1)

Giorgio Agamben

 

We will have to ask ourselves the only serious question that truly matters: where are we now? 

And it is a question we should answer not just with our words, but with our lives too.

 

 

I.

 

A state of exception is one which grants the powers that be the right to suspend parliamentary procedure and transcend the rule of law in the name of the greater good - or, as in the case of the coronavirus pandemic, public health.

Although the idea that a ruler or government may need to take extraordinary measures in order to deal with an emergency of some kind is nothing new, the concept of Ausnahmezustand was introduced into modern political philosophy by Carl Schmitt (someone who, as a prominent member of the Nazi Party, knew a thing or two about creating and exploiting a crisis situation in order to consolidate and extend power).     

 

The concept was then further developed by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who, in his book State of Exception (2005), argues that rule by decree has become an increasingly common phenomenon in all modern states. To illustrate this, he traces out the manner in which the September 11 attacks mutated into a war on terror; something which involved invading Afghanistan and bombing Baghdad, but also justified the creation of a surveillance system (in the name of homeland security) which placed everyone under suspicion. 

 

The key thing is: temporary measures have a way of becoming permanent once they are put in place; i.e., the exception becomes the rule ...

 

 

II.  

 

And so, here we are in 2022 ... 

 

But, asks Agamben, where are we now as we enter a post-pandemic world? 

 

To try and answer this question, Agamben has collected 25 short texts written during the state of exception triggered by Covid-19 [a]. Reflecting upon the Great Reset affecting Western democracies, he observes with astonishment as a majority of citizens not only accept but demand unprecedented limitations on their freedom.

 

Agamben took a lot of criticism for these short texts, including from fellow intellectuals who, rather than think through the political and ethical consequences of the measures taken during the pandemic, gleefully supported mask mandates, lockdowns, social distancing rules, and programmes of mass vaccination.

 

But he should, rather, have been commended for his courage in speaking up and speaking out when so many remained silent or simply echoed the official line that biosecurity (and protecting the state health system) is all that matters.  

 

 

III.

 

Agamben cerainly doesn't mince his words: he explicitly states at the outset, for example, that, in his view, "the dominant powers of today have decided to pitilessly abandon the paradigm of bourgeois democracy - with its rights, its parliaments, and its constitutions" [8] and replace it with a new order that smells suspiciously despotic. 

 

We've not seen anything like this in Europe since 1933, "when the new Chancellor Adolf Hitler, without formally abolishing the Weimar Constitution, declared a state of exception that [...] effectively invalidated the constitutional propositions that were ostensibly still in force" [8] [b].

 

New governing techniques - sold to us via a compliant media and our favourite online networks - combine ideals of wokeness and wellness into a kind of zen fascism. But, rather touchingly, Agamben remains optimistic; he can still envision new forms of resistance "and those who can still envision a politics to come should be unhesitatingly committed to them" [10] [c]. 

 

I'm not quite sure I understand precisely what he means by this politics to come, but he insists it will "not have the obsolete shape of bourgeois democracy, nor the form of the techonological-sanitationist despotism that is replacing it" [10] [d].

 

Hmmm ...

 

 

IV. 

 

The coronavirus pandemic was one thing: the climate of panic cultivated by the media and authorities in order to establish a state of exception was something else. Who now would disagree with that? With the fact that the response to Covid-19 was disproportionate to say the very least. 

 

But then it provided the ideal pretext for imposing exceptional measures and increasing the level of fear that has been "systematically cultivated in people's minds" [13] in recent years; fear which makes us regard everyone as a vector of infection. 

 

Even those individuals who appear perfectly fit and well may be asymptomatic plague-spreaders. In fact, the apparently healthy are more dangerous than the obviously sick - so it becomes necessary to lock everyone up (or down) just to be on the safe side. 

 

And if this results - as it must - in the deterioration of human relationships, well, too bad; "even loved ones must not be approached or touched" [15]. Bare life is better than risking even the tiniest chance that one might get seriousy ill and die. 

 

But, unfortunately, bare life and the fear of losing it, "is not something that unites people; rather, it blinds and separates them" [18]. A society that values survival at all costs (which is even prepared to sacrifice freedom) ultimately isn't a society at all. 

 

And it certainly isn't a dwelling place; a Heideggerian word that Agamben seems to cherish, much like Byung-Chul Han, who in his most recent work insists mankind no longer knows how to dwell on the earth and under the sky [e]. It's certainly hard to dwell when you are socially distanced from other mortals and think that communicating on Zoom is preferable to meeting face-to-face. 

 

Like Agamben, I don't believe you can sustain or create a community based on new digital technology alone. In the end, hell is not other people, but the suspension of real friendships and physical contact with others.     

 

 

V.  

   

One of the great zombie-mantras of the pandemic - certainly here, in the UK - was: Follow the science [f].

 

But perhaps instead we - particularly journalists - ought to have interrogated the scientists. Because it is often mistaken - and often dangerous - to entrust everything to those in white coats:

 

"Rightly or not, scientists pursue in good faith the interests of science and, as history can teach us, they are willing to sacrifice any moral concern in this pursuit. No one will need reminding that, under Nazism, many esteemed scientists executed eugenic policies, never hestitating to take advantage of the camps for the performance of lethal experiments they considered useful for the progress of science [...]" [44-45]      

  

Experimental vaccines anyone ...?

 

  

Notes

 

[a] Giorgio Agamben, Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics, trans. Valeria Dani (ERIS, 2021). 

      This work was originally published in Italy as A che punto siamo? L'epidemia come politica, (Quodlibet, 2020). 

      All page numbers in the post refer to the updated English edition which has added chapters.

 

[b] Some readers will baulk at this hypothesis and find it silly (or offensive) to compare what is happening in Europe now with what happened in the 1930s. But Agamben insists that the liberal democratic order is "being replaced by a new despotism that, with the pervasiveness of its controls and with its suspension of all political activity, will be worse than the totalitarianisms we have known thus far" [42]. 

 

[c] Agamben would hate my description of his thinking as optimistic. As he tells one interviewer (Dimitria Pouliopoulou): "Pessimism and optimism are psychological states that have nothing to do with political analyses: those who use these terms only demonstrate their inability to think." [64]

 

[d] Speaking with Dimitria Pouliopoulou, Agamben says this about his idea of a politics to come: "For a careful observer it is difficult to decide whether we live today, in Europe, in a democracy that sees increasingly despotic forms of control, or in a totalitarian state disguised as a democracy. It is beyond both that a new, future politics will have to appear." [69]

 

[e] See Byung-Chul Han, Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022). I reflect on this book in a post that to be published shortly. 

[f] Whilst Agamben hints at a zombie-like aspect of the pandemic when he refers to human bodies "suspended indefinitely between life and death" in a twilight zone, unable to escape "its strictly medical boundaries" [64], I can't help thinking first and foremost of the ever-brilliant Mark Steyn whenever I hear someone utter the phrase follow the science: click here. 

 

To go to Part 2 of this post, click here.

Wood You Believe It? Another Post on Dendrophilia (With Reference to the Case of Humphrey Mackevoy)

Dendrophilia

ALCU (A Little Crazy Universe) 

on tumblr.com

 

 

'I am just back from the woods. My thighs are cold from the touch of bark 

and that instrument of my pleasure is still gently throbbing ...'

 

 

I. 

 

For many men, particularly those who subscribe to slang terms popular within the American porn industry, to have wood simply means that one is sporting a sturdy erection. But for dendrophiles - that is to say, those tree lovers who are sexually attracted to our leafy friends - this verb implies a great deal more. 

 

Rupert Birkin, for example, famously entered into a state of erotic delirium when surrounded by various plants, bushes, and young trees and found nothing more fulfilling than to clasp the silvery trunk of a birch against his naked flesh and feel "its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges" before then ejaculating on the leaves [1].

 

Many readers will of course be familiar with Birkin's case. But I'm guessing that far fewer readers will know the story of Humphrey Mackevoy, as told by John Fortune and John Wells in their 1971 novel, A Melon for Ecstasy ... [2]

 

 

II. 

 

Constructed from fictional newspaper reports, letters, and diary entries by the novel's young male protagonist, A Melon for Ecstasy describes how Humphrey Mackevoy could only become sexually aroused and achieve his satisfaction by penetrating trees in which he has carefully bored a suitable hole to accomodate his erect penis [3] - a tall, slender laburnum being the primary object of his desire.

 

Whilst initially his dendrophilia causes him shame and confusion, he eventually comes to accept and, indeed, feel a certain degree of pride in his perverse form of love - even though it leads to his imprisonment [4].    

 

The book is intended as a satirical depiction of British sexual mores at the time and the manner in which the press sensationalise stories involving illicit sex acts in order to sell papers, whilst at the same time moralising in the name of public decency and family values. 

 

The novel also contains a series of comic sub-plots, involving local naturists keen to know the origin of the mysterious holes and town councillors worried about the damage being caused to trees located in parks and woodlands over which they exercise authority. 

 

However, whilst this book sounds like a fun read, it is, in fact, a profoundly irritating and disappointing work. 

 

Alwyn W. Turner may like to pretend on his Trash Fiction website that A Melon for Ecstasy is a strangely beautiful book of startling genius, containing some stupendous ideas and elegant prose, but he also describes Humphrey's tender embrace of a tree as an act of rape, so I'm not sure we should take anything he says too seriously [5].  

 

For me, Harry Crews is the critic who best identifies the problem with A Melon for Ecstasy. Writing in a review for The New York Times, he asks: "Is there anything so tedious as comic novel that is not serious?" [6] 

 

I don't know if we always need the skull behind the laughter to turn comic fiction into great literature, but, like Crews, I don't much care for books that only sneer and giggle and go for cheap gags. 

 

Ultimately, I feel about A Melon for Ecstasy what D. H. Lawrence felt about Ben Hecht's novel Fantazius Mallare (1922), which includes an illustration by Wallace Smith of the protagonist enjoying coition with a tree: I'm sorry, it didn't thrill me a bit ... [7]

    

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 107-08. 

      And see my post 'Floraphilia Redux' (17 Oct 2016) in which I discuss the case of Rupert Birkin: click here.  

 

[2] John Fortune and John Wells, A Melon for Ecstasy, (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971). 

      Note that there is also a Penguin edition (1973) and, more recently, a Prion Books edition published in their Humour Classics series (2002).

      John Fortune (1939 - 2013) was an English satirist, comedian, writer, and actor, best known for his work with John Bird and Rory Bremner on the TV series Bremner, Bird and Fortune. John Wells (1936 - 1998) was an English actor, writer and satirist; one of the original contributors to Private Eye.

 

[3] Heterosexual non-dendrophiles will of course insist that such a glory hole carved into the body of a tree thirty-three inches from the ground and at just the right angle, is an artificial vagina and is therefore merely a substitute for the real thing (i.e., the female sex organ which they prefer to penetrate). 

      In this manner, they seek to reassure themselves that no one really desires a tree as an object in itself and reaffirm the view that there is only one legitimate orifice in which to place the erect penis and ejaculate. One might remind these people, however, of the old saying popular amongst the Arabs and Turks: One penetrates a woman from duty; a youth for pleasure; and a nonhuman animal or object to experience ecstasy (the title of the novel by Fortune and Wells is a reference to this).  

 

[4] Fifty years later, and the law will still come down hard on those who love trees - or those, such as William Shaw, 22, of Airdrie, Scotland, posing as a dendrophile and simulating sex with a tree in his local park, in broad daylight and in plain sight of passers-by, including a woman walking her dog.             

      Convicted on a charge of public indecency, Shaw was sentenced to five months in jail in February 2010 and told by the judge that his behaviour was disgusting. Shaw was also put on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years. Readers who are interested can find the full story in The Scotsman (15 Feb 2010): click here. 

      However, they should also see the report on the BBC news website published three months later, in which it is revealed that the Airdrie park flasher won his appeal and not only had his prison sentence quashed and name removed from the SOR, but also had the allegation of dendrophilia struck from the public record. Following his appeal, Shaw was put on a year's probabion and ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service. Click here to read the report in full.

 

[5] To read Turner's review of A Melon for Ecstasy on Trash Fiction, click here.   

[6] Harry Crews, review of A Melon for Ecstasy, in The New York Times (8 Aug 1971): click here.

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath, by Ben Hecht', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 215.

      As Lawrence goes on to explain, a man's coition with a tree might serve as the stuff of comedy, but so too is it - as a form of contact between two alien natures - a deadly serious affair, involving violent struggle as well as sensual delight. By simply turning Humphrey Mackevoy's story into a joke, Fortune and Wells miss an opportunity to tell us something really interesting about paraphilia and the inhuman character of sex. 

      For a further discussion of Lawrence's daimonic dendrophilia and his criticism of Ben Hecht's notorious novel, see my post of 3 Oct 2020: click here. 

 

 

This post is for Dr Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, who writes a fascinating blog on addictive, obsessional, compulsive and/or extreme behaviours - including a wide variety of paraphilias. His post on dendrophilia can be found by clicking here. 

 

 

Lady Chatterley's Lover Visits Harold Hill

My local boozer, The Pompadours - 

and some Lawrence scholars find the Sun Inn, Eastwood, a bit rough ...

 

 

Harold Hill is a long way removed (in every sense) from the fictional mining village of Tevershall, which Lawrence imagines in his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). 

 

And of course, I'm no Oliver Mellors, the ex-soldier turned gamekeeper who strides through the pages of the above in his dark green trousers "with a red face and red moustache" [1], angry at the world. 

 

Having said that, sometimes when walking around the postwar housing estate on the far north-eastern fringes of Greater London that is Harold Hill [2], I'm tempted to tell the natives - whom my mother always disparagingly called Cockneys - something similar to what Mellors wishes to tell the working men and women of Tevershall:

 

"'I'd tell 'em: Look! look at yerselves! One shoulder higher than t'other, legs twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves [...] Spoilt yerselves an' yer lives. [...] Take yer clothes off an' look at yerselves. Yer ought ter be alive an' beautiful, an' yer ugly an' half dead.'" [3] 

 

Of course, I'd not say this with a broad East Midland's accent. 

 

And I can't blame the degenerate condition of the locals on years of hard physical toil - on the contrary, it's the fact that many of them don't work (or exercise) that's the problem; that they prefer vegetating on the sofa watching Netflix, eating junk food delivered to their doors, driving even the shortest distance, rather than walk a few hundred yards.

 

To paraphrase Mellors: Their spunk's gone dead - e-scooters and mobile phones and cannabis suck the last bit out of them. Which is a shame, but there you go. 

 

I won't bore readers with statistics, but the stats for the London Borough of Havering when it comes to things like health don't make for happy reading. Obesity, for example, is the norm; if the 18th-century Essex grocer Edward Bright were alive today and decided to ply his trade at Hilldene shops, no one would blink an eye at his great girth. 

 

People down south often like to joke that it's grim up north, but, believe me, it's fucking grim on Harold Hill too [4].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 46. For a full description and character analysis of Oliver Mellors, see my post of July 2020: click here. 

 

[2] Readers interested in knowing more about Harold Hill are reminded of the post published on 28 May 2016 entitled 'And No Birds Sing': click here. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, p. 219. 

 

[4] And if you don't believe me, see the report in the Romford Recorder which revealed that whilst Havering is home to some extremely affluent neighbourhoods, six roads in Harold Hill have been classed by the UK government as among the most deprived in all England: click here.  

 

   

Notes on Crosby and Crane: Pin-Up Boys of the Lost Generation

Harry Crosby (1898-1929) and Hart Crane (1899-1932)

 

La plus volontaire mort c'est la plus belle.

 

 

I. 

 

The initials HC mean different things to different people. 

 

For example, for poor souls suffering with an unremitting headache, they refer to Hemicrania continua, whilst for those to whom the health of horses is a concern, they refer to the connective tissue disorder hyperelastosis cutis.        

 

Then again, for students of organic chemistry - or those working in the oil and gas industry - HC is short for hydrocarbon, whilst for fans of the Tour de France, HC designates the most difficult type of mountain climb (one which is hors catégorie). 

 

For me, however, as an amateur literary critic, the initials HC bring to mind the two Jazz Age American poets Harry Crosby and Hart Crane ...

 

 

II.

 

Crosby and Crane sounds like a double act and, as a matter of fact, these two are often linked in the cultural imagination; not merely because they were both poets of debatable merit, but because each committed suicide at a young age (Crosby was 31 when he shot himself in the head in December 1929 and Crane was 32 when he literally jumped ship in April 1932).  

 

They met for the first time in Paris in January 1929. Harry and his wife, Caresse, had set up the Black Sun Press and were keen to publish new work by the most interesting authors of the day in de luxe editions. Crane was then working on the long poem by which he is best remembered, The Bridge, which he intended as a positive counterstatement to Eliot's Wasteland (1922).    

 

Crane gave Crosby the MS to read and the latter loved it, encouraging his new friend to complete the poem he had been obsessively reworking since 1923. For Crosby, Crane's poem was full of thunder and fire and swept away all the dust and artificiality of the times, reminding him of Blake and, one suspects, of what he aspired to in his own heliocentric verse. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Crosby's obvious excitement had its source not only in the poem itself but also in finding a work answering to his own theories of poetry and his own particular enthusiasms." [1]    

 

For example, both had a quasi-Futurist love of speed and modern technology, seeing in the machine a dynamic expression of man's essentially restless spirit and desire to self-overcome; both also valued open spaces in which to move; and both believed that poetry should not only look back to the past, but connect the present to the future and concern itself with the only themes that really matter: love, beauty, and death. 

 

At heart, then, both were Romantics in the era of Modernism; writers who sought spiritual illumination and a glimpse of some essential reality or lyrical absolute. It's no wonder then that despite his initial enthusiasm for the work of D. H. Lawrence, Crosby concludes that the latter is not his cup of tea:

"'I am a visionary I like to soar he is all engrossed in the body and in the complexities of psychology. [...] He admits of defeat. I do not. He is commonplace. I am not.'" [2]

 

This - and the fact that he can't really write for toffee - puts me off Crosby. I can't dislike him, but neither can I accept this son of one of the richest banking families in New England to be the real deal (despite the painted toe-nails and sun tattoo) [3].  

 

As for Crane, well, to be honest, I'm undecided, knowing as I do so little of the man, so little of his work. Many think him a genius and admire his highly stylised and difficult poetry - for its ambition if nothing else. And some scholars working within queer theory champion Crane as an exemplary outsider who struggled with his homosexuality (when not fucking sailors).    

 

  

III. 

 

In late November 1929, the Crosbys arrived in New York for what they planned to be a short visit. Hart Crane threw a party for them at his Brooklyn apartment on December 7th, where fun was had by all (including fellow poets E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams).

 

Three days later, however, Harry killed himself and his 21-year-old lover - Josephine Rotch, aka the Fire Princess - in an apparent suicide pact. It was Hart Crane who broke news of this tragic event to Crosby's wife and mother. 

 

Shortly after the funeral, Caresse returned to Paris and arranged for the Black Sun edition of The Bridge to be published in February 1930. Sadly, the reviews weren't great and Crane's sense of failure resulted in a creative slump. 

 

Although he desperately looked for "another great theme around which he might order his work" [4], he unfortunately never found such. Rather, having relocated to Mexico, Crane had simply discovered the intoxicating power of tequila.

 

Having attempted suicide on several occasions, Crane boarded a ship back to New York - the S. S. Orizaba - from where, on April 27, 1932, he jumped into the sea having shouted goodbye to a group of fellow passengers. He left no suicide note and his body was never recovered. 

 

Sy Kahn writes:

 

"Crane's death by water and Crosby's death by exploding bullet in his head, in retrospect, and with the testimony of their poems, seem inevitable acts of self-destruction. For both men death was not fearsome, but a portal through which they might find the tormenting, often elusive, absolutes they felt and sought." [5] 

 

He concludes:

 

"The parallels and similarities (even the accident of their initials) in the works and lives of these two poets express the literary vitality of the 1920s [...] In retrospect it seems almost ordained that these poets should have encountered each other before their deaths." [6]  

 

What a pity, then, that both of these young men had always been "too rich and spoilt" and left with no new pleasures to experience but suicide: "the last sort of cocktail excitement" [7].  

 

Notes

 

[1] Sy Kahn, 'Hart Crane and Harry Crosby: A Transit of Poets', in the Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 1, No. 1 (Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 45-56. The line quoted is on p. 47. 

      This essay can be accessed on JSTOR by clicking here. 

 

[2] Harry Crosby writing in his diary, quoted by David Ellis in D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 472-73.

 

[3] Without getting into issues of authenticity etc, let's just say that, for me, Crosby tries a bit too hard to be un poète maudit like his heroes Baudeaire, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, et al. Some people just are extreme and achieve a state of inspired madness without having to paint their nails. Ultimately, who gets closest to the sun - Van Gogh, or Harry Crosby ...?     

 

[4] Sy Kahn, 'Hart Crane and Harry Crosby: A Transit of Poets', Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 54. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 55. 

[6] Ibid., p. 56. 

 

[7] These phrases were said by D. H. Lawrence with reference to the case of Harry Crosby; see his letter to Giuseppe Orioli [18 Dec 1929], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 600-601. 

      See also Lawrence's kind letter to Caresse Crosby (30 Jan 1930), Letters VII 634, in which he tells her: "Harry had a real poetic gift - if only he hadn't tried to disintegrate himself so! This disintegrating spirit, and the tangled sound of it, makes my soul weary to death." 

      He also advises that she not try to recover herself too soon; "it is much better to be a little blind and stunned for a time longer, and not make efforts to see or to feel. Work is the best, and a certain numbness, a merciful numbness. It was too dreadful a blow - and it was wrong."

Of Garden Snails and Motor Cars

Garden Snail (SA/2022)

 

What chance have snails upon an asphalt road

When giant SUVs go roaring by? [1] 

 

 

I assume my neighbour loves his wife and children; but I know for a fact he loves his sleek and (to my eyes) sinister looking Sports Utility Vehicle parked proudly in front of his house on what was once a garden full of wild plants, before being concreted over. 

 

And I know this not only because I have seen the way he cares for the car, but heard the way he boasts of its special features, including optimal traction, enhanced connectvity, and a fuel-injected engine (terms which mean absolutely nothing to me). 

 

He's right, of course, when he says it's a marvel of automotive engineering, but I can't help thinking: So what? 

 

The design, development, and manufacturing of motor cars is not something that interests or excites my imagination - certainly not in the way that the snails creeping about in the dampness of my garden after the rain, fascinate and enchant. 

 

For if, as my neighbour insists, his SUV is a marvel of engineering and technology, then a snail is a wonder of evolution, first moving on to land about 350 million years ago. The former may be able to crush the latter under its alloy wheels, but when it comes to possessing special features, Cornu asperum [2] leaves even the most advanced automobile in the dust. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing Harry Crosby, who opens his poem 'The Golden Gourd' with the following lines: "What chance have snakes upon an asphalt road / When giant limousines go gliding by,". The poem can be found in Ladders to the Sun, (Soul Bay Press Ltd., 2013), p. 38. 

 

[2] The scientific name of the common garden snail is subject to intense debate amongst malacologists; although classified as Helix aspersa for over two centuries, the prevailing wisdom now places it in the genus Cornu. Whatever we call it, this terrestrial mollusc - originally native to the Mediterranean region - now dwells happily in several parts of the world. In fact, the only place you are unlikely to find one, is Antarctica.  

 

For an earlier post in which I reflect favourably on the snail, click here. 

 

 

Guards! D. H. Lawrence and the Potency of Men

Guards erect with breasts bright red 

and the skins of bears upon their head

All the nice girls love a sailor, so they say [1].

 

But for D. H. Lawrence, it's all the king's soldiers who catch his eye; especially those guards marching stiffly in red tunics and black busbies in whom phallic pride and sun glory is manifest in equal measure. 

 

This is made clear in the early poem 'Guards' [2], where he writes of smouldering soldiers with dark eyes and closed warm lips who advance upon him in a soft-impulsive but somewhat threatening manner, like a wave, before then turning, leaving him to admire their burning shoulders in retreat. 

 

The encounter is clearly, for Lawrence, one with homoerotic overtones. I don't agree with everything that Gregory Woods writes, but it's hard to argue with his claim that in the section of 'Guards' entitled 'Evolution of Soldiers', "their apparent evolution is similar to that of a penis, through tumescence and detumescence" [3]. 

 

Expanding on his theme, Woods continues:

 

"Perspective causes each man to seem to grow as he approaches with red tunic, black busby and 'dark threats'. He passes 'above us', in the classic position of sexual advantage. At 'ebb-time', when the group has just passed by, its phalluses remain erect for a glorious moment, before subsiding." [4]  

 

 

II. 

 

Almost twenty years later, and Lawrence is still thinking of the soldiers in Hyde Park he saw in the summer of 1909. 

 

In a letter sent to Harry Crosby in 1928, he encloses an extended version of 'Guards' - one with an unpublished third section which describes the soldiers as a "column of flesh erect and painted vermillion" and as "Sun-dipped men [...] all blood-potent", who have come together in their maleness [5].

                   

Again, you don't need to be an expert in queer studies to appreciate that this verse is invested with erotic desire for the male body: "And the male body is the symbol of its own sexual focus, the phallus." [6] 

 

Thus, whilst there is "no questioning the fact that his art is primarily hetero-erotic in intention" [7], Lawrence also loves daydreaming about the potency of men and phallic heroes dipped in scarlet.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] "Ship Ahoy! (All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor)" is an English music hall song from 1908, written by Bennett Scott and A. J. Mills. The song was first performed by male impersonator Hetty King.  

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Guards!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 34-35. 

      As Pollnitz notes: "DHL regularly visited Hyde Park, in central London. He planned to take Louie Burrows there in July 1909 as he had Jessie Chambers on an earlier visit [...]." See The Poems, Vol. II, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press 2013), p. 843. Whether either young woman was particularly interested in seeing soldiers on parade, I don't know, but Lawrence adored the spectacle of erect young men in uniform marching past.   

 

[3] Gregory Woods, Articulate Male Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry, (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 130.  

 

[4] Ibid.  

[5] See Lawrence's letter to Harry Crosby [30 April - 1 May 1928], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 388-390. The third part of 'Guards' is entitled 'Potency of Men' and consists of five rhyming quatrains. It is reproduced in full on pp. 388-89 from Lawrence's MS.  

[6] Gregory Woods, Articulate Male Flesh, pp. 130-31. 

[7] Ibid., p. 137. 

 

 

To read a sister post to this one, on Lawrence's extended version of the poem 'Gipsy' contained in the Crosby letter, click here.