A Tale of Two Toby Jugs

Fig. 1: Paul Gauguin: Jug Self-portrait (1889)

Fig. 2: Friar Tuck character jug made in England (mid-20thC)

 

I. 

 

The 19th-century French artist, Paul Guaguin, was an interesting and influential figure who produced some astonishing work in a number of mediums, including ceramic; first during the period 1886-1888 (a couple of months of which he spent living in Arles with his friend Vincent Van Gogh) and then again from 1893-1895 (after returning to Paris from his first trip to Tahiti).  

Whilst there are thought to be around sixty of Gauguin's ceramic pieces still surviving, the one that is perhaps best known is a self-portrait in the form of a jug made shortly after his famous bust-up with Van Gogh, in early 1889. 

 

Whilst being threatened with a razor and then having to deal with a madmen cutting off part of his left lughole would undoubtedly be unsettling, Gauguin also witnessed a second traumatic event a few days later; the beheading of a notorious Spanish murderer, Prado, in Paris [1].

 

These two things clearly influenced his macabre and grisly ceramic self-portrait, in which coloured glaze is used to suggest blood running down the side of his face and congealing at his neck. If one looks closely, one sees that an ear is missing. The closed eyes, meanwhile, suggest a death mask. 

 

It's a brilliant - if brutal - work, reproductions of which largely fail to convey both the brilliance and brutality.

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, I still wouldn't swap the Friar Tuck Toby jug [2], pictured above, which was one of my mother's most treasured possessions and which she kept in the cupboard by the gas meter for over seventy years.  

 

For despite the fact that this object used to frighten me as a small child and lacks the artistic, cultural and finacial value of Guauguin's piece, it means far more to me. Walter Benjamin insists that a mass manufactured object lacks aura - but that, I find, is simply not true. 

 

Or, even if it is true, I don't care; my mother's Friar Tuck Toby jug has a magical presence for me (as well as sentimental value, which certain intellectuals like to sneer at and find indecent, although Roland Barthes appreciated its importance).        

 

Notes

 

[1] Prado had murdered a prostitute. Gauguin - like Nietzsche - thought his sentence unjust and the execution profoundly disturbed him; not least because, according to his account, it was botched and it took two attempts to decapitate the prisoner. 

      Prado was executed on 28 December, 1888. Van Gogh, with whom Gauguin had discussed Prado's case, mutilated his ear on 23 December. Thus, it was anything but a merry Christmas that year for Gauguin. 

 

[2] I'm sure a collector or an expert in this area will tell me that what I have is not, in fact, a traditional Toby jug, but rather a character jug - the difference being that the latter only features the head and face and not the full body. Be that as it may, my mother always called her piece a Toby jug and I grew up referring to it as such and don't intend to stop calling it a Toby jug now.  

 

 

On the Strange Case of the Golden-Backed Frog With a Bonnet Mushroom Growing From Its Flank

 

Grenouille aux champignon

 

 

As if the rise of irradiated black frogs in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone wasn't enough to think about, we now discover that in the lush foothills of India's Western Ghats a live golden-backed frog has been found with a tiny bonnet mushroom sprouting from above its hind leg - which is not something you see every day ...

In fact, it's never been seen before - in India or anywhere else - and so scientists are naturally a bit puzzled by this, whilst those with a special interest in amphibians are particularly concerned, as this may not be a good development (for the frogs). 

 

Whilst it's true that even people can develop fungal infections - athlete's foot, for example - mushrooms usually grow on decaying plant matter and rotten wood, not live animal tissue; skin is a nutrient poor surface and not ideal for living upon as a rule. So perhaps this is just a very rare (rather freaky) occurrence. 

 

As the frog seen in the photo above wasn't captured, researchers are uncertain what's going on; whether there's something uniquely different about its skin, or whether the mushroom is harmful or benign, for example. But, as I've said, herpetologists are worried by this development, as frogs and hundreds of other amphibian species across the world are already under threat from another parasitic fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis).

 

Infections by what is commonly called the chytrid fungus - which ruin the salt/water balance of the skin and eventually cause heart failure - have resulted in a steady decline of amphibian populations globally, and this, in my view, is a terribly sad fact. For, like my mother, I love little gem-like frogs and think everyone should have to build and maintain a pond in their back garden by law.  

Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum: A Post for All Souls' Day in Memory of My Mother

Traditionally, candles are used on All Souls' Day to provide 

light for the poor souls languishing in purgatorial darkness.

 

 

All Soul's Day is a day of prayer and remembrance for those who have departed this world but failed to make it straight into heaven; i.e., those poor souls who find themselves hanging about in that afterlife destination known as purgatory [1].

 

To be clear, these people are men and women of faith; they are not evil-doers who are ultimately bound for hell. Nevertheless, due perhaps to the taint of venial sin, or having failed to fully atone for past transgressions, they require some form of spiritual cleansing before they can ascend unto that place inhabited by angels and saints. 

 

The Church - and when I say the Church I mean the Catholic Church - teaches that this purification of souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the living (thus the call to commemoration) and I like the idea that just as the dead can look on and help us, so too can we help them and, indeed, have a duty to be kind and generous to the departed. 

 

It's wrong for the dead to haunt the living and to resent their happiness; but it's also wrong of the living to curse the dead and deny them their entry into the highest place where they will know the gladness of death (which some believe to be oneness with God and others think of as oblivion). 

 

D. H. Lawrence was often respectful and tender towards the dead in his late poetry. He asks us, for example, to show pity towards the dead that were ousted out of life, but are not yet ready to make the final journey and so linger in the shadows like outcast dogs on the margins of heaven [2].            

 

In a very beautiful poem entitled 'All Souls Day', Lawrence writes:

 

 

Be kind, oh be kind to your dead

and give them a little encouragement

and help them to build their little ship of death.

For the soul has a long, long journey after death

to the sweet home of pure oblivion.

Each needs a little ship, a little ship

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey

Oh, from your heart

provide for your dead once more, equip them

like departing mariners, lovingly. [3]

Ultimately, it is our love and warm memories which purify the souls of the dead; the compassion of still-living hearts that helps them on "to the fathomless deeps ahead, far, far from the grey shores of marginal existence" [4].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although many people confuse and conflate the terms, purgatory is not limbo and whilst the former is Church doctrine, the latter isn't - despite the fact that many Catholics believed in it and wrote about it, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. 

      Whilst purgatory is reserved for souls ultimately bound for heaven, limbo was believed to be the final destination for the souls of babies that had died without being baptised. In other words, a kind of posthumous neonatal unit either on the edge of hell or the lip of heaven. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI requested that Church theologians reconsider this idea and argued that the truly Christian thing to do was to pray that God's mercy be shown to all deceased babies.     

      As for purgatory, it's probably best to think of it as a state of being or condition of the soul, rather than a place. That way, one can avoid having to try and give coordinates as to its location. This seems to be the line that is presently taken by the Church.  

      Readers who are interested in this subject may like to see Diana Walsh Pasulka's book Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture, (Oxford University Press, 2014). 

 

[2] See Lawrence's poem 'The Houseless Dead' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 635-36. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'All Souls Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 635. 

      I read this poem in full at my mother's funeral service in February of this year: click here.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'After All Saints Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 637. 

 

This post is also in memory of Felisa Martinez and Angeliki Thanassa.   

Candy Flower

 

 

 

I suppose it's due to the red and white design, but the flower on the left makes me think of my mother - or, more precisely, of my mother's favourite sweet; the creamy strawberry and yogurt flavoured hard candy made by the German company Storck [1] and sold under the brand name Campino ...

 

Launched in 1966, Campino, like its equally delicious caramel-flavoured stablemate, Werther's Original (1969), has given pleasure - and, as a dentist might depressingly add, tooth decay - to untold millions of adults and children ever since.

 

Why these individually wrapped delights were mysteriously discontinued in the UK, thereby obliging British sweet lovers to buy them at an inflated price from the US or Canada, I don't know [2]. But it's a damn shame, as Vincent Vega would say.

 

Although, as much as I miss these sweets, I miss my mother more.  
 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] August Storck KG, trading as Storck, is a German confectionery manufacturer headquartered in Berlin. It is owned by Axel Oberwelland, the billionaire great-grandson of the eponymous founder (who later changed his surname from Storck to Oberwelland). The quintessentialy British chocolate brand Bendicks, has been a subsidary of August Storck since 1988. 

      For more info, please visit their website by clicking here.      

 

[2] I suspect it was probably something to do with concern over so-called E-numbers (i.e., substances used as food additives).   

 

 

Mourning Post: with Reference to Roland Barthes's Journal de Deuil

A favourite photo of my mother

(taken in 1947, aged 21)

 

 

"Does being able to live without someone you loved 

mean you loved her less than you thought ...?" 

 

 

I.

 

There are some books we love immediately upon first reading; and there are other books which it takes time (and several readings) to fall in love with. 

 

Then there are books like Roland Barthes's Journal de deuil (2009) [a] which one only begins to appreciate once one has lived through a similar experience as the author - in this case, the death of a mother.

 

 

II.

 

The day after his mother's death, in October 1977, Barthes began assembling notes written on quartered slips of paper in which he reflected on his sadness, sense of loss, and the fact that modern society seems to leave no time or space in which to express one's grief; as soon as someone dies, there's a frenzied attempt to move on and the bereaved are encouraged to get over it, as if they have a minor illness [b]. 

 

During the following two years, Barthes wrote over 300 of these notes, the contents of which eventually being published in the form of a mourning diary. 

 

I do not here wish to present an overview of these fragments of text, but simply comment on those ideas which most resonate with me at this time and express my agreement with Barthes that the individual should insist on their right to mourn; for it is also the right to "the loving relation it implies" [55]. 

 

In a nutshell, dear reader, don't let your suffering be stolen from you ... [c]

 

Note: the titles supplied below are mine.

 

 

III.

 

On the Corpse Bride

 

There was, I would suggest, something of the same high degree of intimacy between Roland Barthes and his mother as between D. H. Lawrence and his. 

 

Thus, for example, the opening note of the former's Mourning Diary which suggests that the first night grieving for one's mother is comparable in terms of its passion and emotional intensity to a wedding night, reminds me of the opening verse from one of the latter's early poems:

"My love looks like a girl tonight,

      But she is old.

The plaits that lie along her pillow

      Are not gold,

But threaded with filigree silver,

      And uncanny cold."

 

The same poem concludes: 

"Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her dreams 

      Of perfect things.

She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,

      And her dead mouth sings ..." [d]

 

 

On the Maternal Body

 

This first note is followed by one written the next day in which Barthes, who was homosexual, counters the accusation that he has never known a woman's body: "I have known the body of my mother, sick and then dying." [4]    

 

Me too: and it's only now that I stop to think of the strangeness of this fact; that one was fated to care for the body one was born of when that body approached its end and that from out of the death of this maternal body one is somehow issued anew. 

 

To quote from Lawrence once more: "My little love, my dearest / Twice you have issued me / Once from your womb, sweet mother / Once from your soul ..." [e]

 

 

On Posthumous Desire

 

The fifth fragment dated 29 October is one of the most astonishing: it exactly summarises my position and how I feel. No commentary is required, it just needs quoting in full:

"The desires I had before her death (while she was sick) can no longer be fulfilled, for that would mean it is her death that allows me to fulfill them - her death might be a liberation in some sense with regard to my desires. But her death has changed me, I no longer desire what I used to desire. I must wait - supposing that such a thing could happen - for a new desire to form, a desire following her death." [18] [f]

 

 

On Turning Life (and Death) into Literature 

 

I understand why Barthes didn't want to discuss his mother's life, let alone write about her death, for fear of "making literature out of it" [22]. 

 

However, as a writer, he just couldn't help himself - and neither can I. 

 

For like Barthes, I recognise that literature originates with a death - the death of a porcupine, for example, or perhaps even the death of the author - and that Walter Benjamin was right to say that what we ultimately seek in art is the knowledge of an event that is denied to us in reality. [g]   

 

 

On Last Words

 

Many people about to die do so in silence, particularly if, like my mother, Alzheimer's robbed them of their ability to communicate years earlier. 

 

And I'm not sure there's anything further to say to the dying beyond a certain point; kind gestures - such as a smile, a kiss, a squeeze of the hand - seem to matter more at the very end. 

 

Having said that, the romantic notion of last words - one which "falsely promises a final burst of lucidity and meaning before a person passes" [h] remains ingrained within our culture and even Barthes finds himself often thinking of his mother's words spoken "in the breath of her agony" [40].

 

Similarly, I find the final two words spoken to me by my mother constantly recurring; the first a word of greeting and the second one of recognition: Hello Stephen. The memory of these words will, I trust, always move me. [i]    

 

 

On Courage

 

Barthes is right: mourning doesn't require courage; the time for courage is when your mother is sick and requires care; when you witness her suffering, her sadness, her confusion and have to conceal your tears (or, as in my case, control your anger and frustration). 

 

 

On Absence [I]

 

Barthes is struck by the painful nature of absence; that it is not so much a lack, as a wound. And struck also by the fact that, with his mother gone, he no longer has anyone to announce his arrival to (or greet him) when he gets home. 

 

Again, I understand this perfectly. But, luckily, I have Cat for company and whilst cats may or may not understand what it is to mourn, they certainly know when we are sad, depressed, or anxious and act accordingly (i.e., attempt to comfort us).   

 

 

On Absence [II] 

 

Everytime I go upstairs and look into my mother's room, "there unexpectedly rises within me, like a bursting bubble: the realisation that she no longer exists, she no longer exists ..." [78] 

 

And I realise also that the dead are all equally dead and gone; it doesn't matter if they died two months ago, like my mother, 36 years ago like Barthes's maman, or two millennia ago like that Siberian princess preserved in ice. 

 

Death is a flat and timeless ontological plane upon which nothing matters and nothing changes and to know this - to know that the dead are eternally and absolutely dead - is also to know that we too "will die forever and completely" [119] [j].    

 

 

On the Truth of Mourning

 

The fragment dated 28 May, 1978, is another that is worth quoting in full:   

 

"The truth about mourning is quite simple: now that  maman is dead, I am faced with death (nothing any longer separates me from it except time)."

Unfortunately, being 60 - the same age as Barthes when he wrote this - there's not even a great deal of time any longer separating me from death (although, hopefully, I'll not be hit by a laundry van in the near future) [k].  

 

But this tragic realisation enables one to understand why it was Nietzsche taught his readers not to pray, but to bless ...

 

 

On Some Sunny Day

 

In a very brief hand-scribbled note left for me and my sister, my mother expressed her hope that, one day, we'd meet again. I don't think that's very likely (or even very desirable; the thought of personal immortality is one I find laughable and abhorrent) [l].

 

But, like Marcel Proust, Barthes is devastated by the fact his mother has died and echoes the author of À la recherche du temps perdu when he writes: "If I were sure of meeting Maman again, I'd die right away." [157]

 

 

On Acedia

 

As we know, the ancient Greeks had a word for everything, including that state of listless indifference in which the heart slowly contracts and hardens: ἀκηδία - or, as we write in Latinised modern English, acedia (or accidie). 

 

It's a concept that Christian theologians borrowed and developed in moral terms; and it's a concept that many writers in the 20th century seemed to have a penchant for, though tending to discuss it as a psychological (or existential) phenomenon. Aldous Huxley, for example, wrote an essay on the subject and concluded that it was one of the main afflictions of the modern age [m].

 

Walter Benjamin also gave acedia an important place within his literary criticism, describing it as an indolence of the heart [n]; whilst Barthes, writing in his Mourning Diary, notes that whilst he believed that following his mother's death there would be a liberation in kindness, what has actually happened is he finds himself "unable to invest lovingly in any other being" [118].

 

In a later fragment, he defines acedia as a form of desolating egoism and writes:

 

"Horrible figure of mourning: acedia, hard-heartedness: irritability, impotence to love. Anguished because I don't know how to restore generosity to my life - or love." [178]            

 

Again, it pains to me say, but I know exactly what he means ...  

Maintaining the Quotidian

 

When my mother died, I thought I'd want to flee the house; to get out as often as possible and meet as many people as possible; to get back into the world. 

 

But, two months on, I've been nowhere and seen no one and I think Barthes provides a clue as to why this is; one tries to continue living - for a while at least - as if she were still here and according not so much to her values, but her needs. 

 

By maintaining the household order (or what Barthes terms the domestic quotidian) - cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. - one shares in the activities that shaped her life and it's a way of remembering and silently conversing with her [o].

Anti-Mourning

 

Q: What is "the furthest from, the most antipathetic to" [196] mourning in gentle silence? 

 

A: Reading Le Monde, "in its acid and well-informed tactics" [196], says Barthes, writing in 1978; checking social media, in its malevolent toxicity, say I, here in 2023.   

 

In Memory / Filial Piety

 

Like Sade, Barthes has no concern for posterity; no desire to be read and remembered after he's dead; no wish for a monument. He is, he says, perfectly content to vanish completely [p].

 

However, Barthes cannot accept that this should be the case for his mother; "perhaps because she has not written and her memory depends entirely on me" [234]. 

That's why I'm writing this post (and those related to it); I would also like my mother's kindness and modesty to be recorded. As I said at her funeral [q], if I don't speak up for her, no one will (certainly not my sister). 

 

But as Barthes's translator Richard Howard notes, perhaps the ultimate task of every son is neither to bury nor sing the praises his mother, but to show a little gratitude; "to exalt her exceptional contribution to his own happiness" [260].   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The English edition of this work by Barthes was translated by Richard Howard as Mourning Diary and published by Hill and Wang in 2010. All page numbers in the post refer to this edition. 

      Arguably, it might have been better to have come up with an alternative title. For in a note of November 30, 1977, Barthes instructs: "Don't say mourning. It's too psychoanalytic. I'm not mourning. I'm suffering." For Barthes, this Proustian notion of suffering is that which remains (ever present) when emotivity passes. See pp. 73 and 103-04.   

 

[b] Barthes writes in the note dated 20 July, 1978, on p. 163, that he finds the idea of taking an anti-depressant drug to help him overcome his grief shameful; as if suffering were a disease, rather than something essential. 

 

[c] In a fragment on p. 71 of the Mourning Diary, dated 29 November, 1977, Barthes writes: "I can't endure seeing my suffering being reduced - being generalized - (à la Kierkegaard): it's as if it were being stolen from me." 

      However, he later realises the importance of transforming suffering from a static stage to a fluid state. See the fragment dated 13 June, 1978, on p. 142.

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bride', in The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 65-66.  

[e] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Virgin Mother', in The Poems, pp. 66.

 

[f] See also the fragment dated 16 November, 1977 on p. 53: "Sometimes roused by desires [...] but they're desires of before - somehow anachronistic; they come from another shore, another country, the country of before."

 

[g] Later in his Mourning Diary, Barthes will admit that writing is his salvation and that depression is when "in the depths of despair, I cannot manage to save myself by my attachment to writing". 

      See the fragments dated 21 November, 1977 on pp. 59 and 62. See also the fragment on p. 105 dated 23 March 1978 in which Barthes speaks of integrating his suffering with his writing in his book on photography (Camera Lucida). And finally, see the notes dated 17 and 18 of January, 1979, on pp. 224-225, in which Barthes admits that since his mother's death he has no desire to construct anything new except in writing.    

 

[h] Michael Erard, 'What People Actually Say Before They Die', The Atlantic (16 Jan 2019): click here.

[i] Having said that, Barthes acknowledges (with horror) the possibility that the memory of a mother's last words will one day fail to move (make cry or make smile). See the fragment dated 19 November, 1977 on p. 57. 

[j] Having said that, in a thanatological fragment published back in September 2014, I wrote:

      "We shouldn't reify death, nor confuse the fact of our own individual death with non-being. At most, death might be seen as a temporary pause or refreshment before the inevitable return to what Nick Land describes as the compulsive dissipation of life." 

      

[k] On 25 February 1980, Barthes was knocked down by the driver of a laundry van while walking home through the streets of Paris. He died from his injuries one month later, aged 64. 

 

[l] I'm a little more sympathetic to the idea of metempsychosis (i.e., the transmigration of souls) and like the idea of atoms being endlessly recycled and assembled into new bodies and objects of all kinds. Seeing the swallows flying "through the summer evening air" whilst on holiday in Morocco, Barthes tells himself: "how barbarous not to believe in souls - in the immortality of souls!" See the fragment dated 13 July, 1978 on p. 159. 

 

[m] See Huxley's essay 'Accidie' in On the Margin (George H. Doran Company, 1923), pp. 25-31. Readers can also click here to read the essay online in the Project Gutenberg ebook.   

[n] See Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne, (Verso, 2003).

 

[o] See the fragments dated 18 August, 1978 on pp. 190 and 192. 

[p] In his will, the Marquis de Sade expressed the wish that his grave be strewn with acorns, so that it would be eventually covered with oak trees. In this way, "any trace of my grave will disappear from the face of the earth, just as I trust the memory of me will fade from the minds of everyone, save for the few who in their goodness have loved me to the last". 

      See the English translation (from which I quote) by R. J. Dent in Philosophy Now, Issue 143 (April/May 2021): click here to read online. 

[q] See the post entitled 'From a Baby in a Basket ...' (27 Feb 2023) which reproduces in full the few lines spoken at my mother's funeral: click here. 

"And so, my love, my mother,

I shall always be true to you."

All Flowers are Evil (Even Lilies of the Valley)

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis)

Photo by Ivar Leidus on Wikimedia Commons

 

 

A reader writes:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

     

 

Notes

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Continuous as the Stars That Shine ...

Osterglocken (SA/2023)

 

"When all at once I saw a crowd / A host, of golden daffodils ..." 

 

I. 

 

Often known by its Latin name - Narcissus [1] - the daffodil was as highly regarded in the ancient world as it is within the modern era: Greek philosopher and floraphile Theophrastus, for example, often mentioned them in his botanical writings; as did the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder. 

 

However, it was left to the 18th-century Swedish botanist Linnaeus to formally identify them as a genus in his Species Plantarum (1753), at which time there were only six known species, whereas now there are over fifty (although the exact number remains disputed) [2].   

 

And it was left to the British Romantic poets to really establish the cultural and symbolic importance of the narcissus in the modern imagination. For with the exception of the rose and the lily, no flower blossoms more within the pages of English literature than the daffodil; Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats all wrote of the eternal joy that these flowers can bring.  

 

 

II. 

 

But surely everyone - not just William Wordsworth and the Welsh - loves to see daffodils flowering in the spring, don't they? 

 

At any rate, I love them: I love their bright golden colour and the manner in which a trumpet-shaped corona is surrounded by a six-pointed star formed by the tepals; and I love the fact they come up every year, regardless of external conditions, nodding in defiant affirmation of life.    

But my love of daffoldils is also a class thing; the common daffodil growing by the roadside and at the bottom of the garden has none of the ornamental superiority or cultivated pretension of the tulip (a bulb that is in my mind forever associated with the nouveaux riches in 17th-century Europe). 

 

 

III.

 

When I was a child - and neighbours still had front gardens, not driveways - I used to love stealing daffodils every Easter to give to my mother and I was touched that MLG should remember this and placed a single yellow flower in my mother's coffin prior to her funeral; she would have liked that [3]. 

 

And, of course, even without the personal context, such a gesture would have been entirely appropriate. For whilst daffodils often symbolise rebirth and resurrection, so too are they closely associated with death ...

 

The ancient Egyptians, for example, used to make decorative use of narcissi in their tombs, whilst the ancient Greeks considered these flowers sacred to both Persephone and Hades. Indeed, the former was said to be picking daffodils when she was abducted by the latter and taken to the Underworld.

 

The fact is, like many beautiful-looking things, daffodils are highly toxic, containing as they do the alkaloid poison lycorine - mostly in the bulb, but also in the stem and leaves - and if you ingest enough lycorine then death will follow a series of very unpleasant symptoms including acute abdominal pains, vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, convulsions and paralysis.  

 

So do make sure, dear reader, that you know your onions and never confuse these with daffodil bulbs ... 

    

 

Notes

 

[1] According to Greek myth, the beautiful-looking young man of this name - Νάρκισσος - rejected the romantic advances of others, preferring instead to gaze fixedly at his own reflection in a pool of water. After his death, it is said that a flower sprouted in the spot at which he spent his life sitting. 

      Interestingly, although the exact origin of the name is unknown, it is often linked etymologically to the Greek term from which we derive the English word narcotic (Narcissus was essentially intoxicated by his own beauty). 

      As for the word daffodil, this seems to be a corruption of asphodel, a flowering bulb to which the former is often compared.

 

[2] In 2006, the Royal Horticultural Society's International Daffodil Register and Classified List identified 87 species. But according to the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families produced in 2014, there are only 52 species (along with at least 60 hybrids). Whatever the correct figure might be, the fact is that many wild species have already become extinct and many others are increasingly under threat due to over-collection and the destruction of natural habitats.

 

[3] When my mother died last month, aged 96, she had been living with dementia for almost a decade and it might be noted in relation to our topic here that daffodils produce a number of alkaloids that have been used in traditional forms of healing and one of which - gelantamine - is exploited in the production of a modern medicinal drug used to treat cognitive decline in those with Alzheimer's.     

 

 

This post is for Maria.

 

 

From a Baby in a Basket ... Lines in Memory of My Mother: Doreen Hall (10 July 1926 - 13 Feb 2023)

Me and My Mother (c. 1969)

 

 

I. 

 

I was in two minds about whether to speak or stay silent at my mother's funeral service, which was held this morning at South Essex Crematorium. But in the end I decided that I had to say something and wanted to say something; for if I didn't, then who would? 

 

But I also decided it was important to keep it simple, keep it brief, and keep it honest. And so, for anyone who might be interested, here's what I said ...    

 

II.

 

From a baby in a basket to a corpse in a casket: and in between - a life. 

 

A life defined in terms of duty and by a promise made as a Brownie: I promise to do my best. 

 

I think the one thing that can be said of my mother without fear of contradiction is that she always tried to do her best. 

 

But now, sadly, my mother's life has come to a close and everyday language is somehow inadequate to express one's emotions at this time - which is why we turn to poetry ... 

 

This short verse, written by D. H. Lawrence at the end of his own life, is one that I find particularly touching: 

 

 

All Souls Day 

 

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. 

For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through 

the door, even when it opens. 

 

And the poor dead, when they have left the walled 

and silvery city of the now hopeless body 

where are they to go, O where are they to go? 

 

They linger in the shadow of the earth. 

The earth's long conical shadow is full of souls 

that cannot find the way across the sea of change. 

 

Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead 

and give them a little encouragement 

and help them to build their little ship of death. 

 

For the soul has a long, long journey after death 

to the sweet home of pure oblivion. 

Each needs a little ship, a little ship 

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey. 

 

Oh, from out of your heart 

provide for your dead once more, equip them 

like departing mariners, lovingly. 

 

For a related post to this one, please click here.

 

With thanks to Erica Buné and Tina Johnson for all their help and kindness arranging my mother's funeral.

Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte

Last photo of my mother on her 96th birthday 

(10 July 2022)

 

 

My mother died today. Unlike Meursault, however, I'm pretty certain of that. 

 

Because today also happens to be my birthday and I'm accepting her death as a kind of final gift: a chance to live again and re-enter the world from the same woman who bore me sixty years ago. 

 

Funny how, at such a time, one thinks of a short French novel published 80-odd years ago (L'Étranger) and of a fictional character indifferent in the face of death, or, perhaps more precisely, accepting of la tendre indifférence (or absurdity) of the universe in which life unfolds and then quickly closes.    

And funny how one also (rather shamefully) recalls the words written by Schopenhauer following the death of a Putzfrau to whom he had been paying a monthly sum by court order after an altercation in which she was injured: Obit anus, abit onus ('The old woman dies, the burden is lifted').

But mostly I just remember the final lovely smile my mother gave me as she found the strength to say my name one last time.

For a follow up post to this one, please click here. 

How Things Protect Us From the Void

Pupils at Bosworth Junior School (Harold Hill) c. 1972

 

Rather like Sebastian Horsley, I have always been happy to have my existence confirmed by official documentation: police files, medical reports, tax returns, etc. are, as he says, for many of us, our "only claim on immortality" [1].

So you can imagine my distress when I discovered that my mother and/or sister acting as self-appointed memory police had thrown away my school reports, neatly handwritten by my teachers in royal blue fountain pen ink at the end of each year and offering an assessment not only my academic ability (limited), but character (flawed) [2].  

 

It is, as I say, not simply that these things had sentimental value; they had also existential import and their disappearance from the world matters to me more even than the disappearance of the schools themselves or the disappearance of old school friends.

 

Of course, my mother and/or sister didn't simply dispose of my school reports; toys, games, letters, and assorted treasures from the past that had helped ground me in being, were all brutally shoved into bin bags. 

 

In the name of tidying up and making space, all traces of my childhood which I had lovingly sought to preserve, were casually eliminated; "replaced by an emptiness that would not be filled" [3] ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), p. 102. 

[2] From memory, I can recall that the consensus seemed to be that whilst I was capable of producing good work, I was too easily distracted, too chatty, and too keen to amuse my fellow pupils by playing the class clown. No doubt they would simply stamp the letters ADHD on the reports were they written today.  

[3] Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police, trans. Stephen Snyder, (Vintage, 2020), p. 14. 

 

 

For further remarks on this subject, with reference to the work of Michael Landy, click here.

We Old Ones, We Are Still Here!

Meine Mutter celebrating her 96th birthday  

 

The old ones say to themselves: 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. - DHL [1]

 

 

I. 

 

This Sunday, my mother will reach 96 years of age. 

 

Some people say this is a real achievement, though I'm not sure about that; surely the achievement is dying an authentic death - something that requires courage and skill - not simply celebrating birthday after birthday and endlessly adding candles to a cake ...? 

Having said that, surviving to a very old age and becoming a monster of stamina in the process does seem to suggest a powerful expression of will. 

 

For even today, when - thanks to improved living standards and advancements in health care - life expectancy has significantly increased since the year my mother was born (1926), not many women in the UK will make it past 95 [2].

 

II.

 

Back in July 1926, D. H. Lawrence travelled north from Italy to Germany with his wife Frieda, in order to celebrate his mother-in-law's 75th birthday. In a letter to Edward McDonald, an American professor who was preparing a bibilography of his writings, Lawrence is scathing about the old who cling on to life and refuse to die: 

 

"'Wir alten, wir sind noch hier!' she says. And here they mean to stay, having, through long and uninterrupted experience, become adepts at hanging on to their own lives, and letting anybody else who is fool enough cast bread upon the waters. Baden-Baden is a sort of Holbein Totentanz: old people tottering their cautious dance of triumph: 'wir sind noch hier: hupf! hupf! hupf!" [3] 

 

 

III. 

 

Three years later, in July 1929, and Lawrence is again in Baden-Baden for the Baroness's birthday, despite his previous determination not to go. As John Worthen notes, this was a bad move [4]. For whereas his previous visits had mostly been happy ones, and he had always been rather fond of his Schweigermutter, now he found her unbearable. 

In a letter to his sister Ada, Lawrence writes:

 

"[...] Frieda's mother really rather awful now. She's 78, and suddenly is in an awful state, thinking her time to die may be coming on. So she fights in the ugliest fashion, greedy and horrible, to get everything that will keep her alive [...] nothing exists but just for the purpose of giving her a horrible strength to hang on a few more years." [5]

 

Later, in the same letter, he complains how his mother-in-law will not be left alone, even for a short period: 

 

"No, she must have Frieda or me there. It's the most ghastly state of almost insane selfishness I ever saw - and all comes of her hideous terror of having to die. At the age of seventy-eight! May god preserve me from ever sinking so low." [6]

 

 

IV.

 

Now, to be fair to my mother, she doesn't gulp down the air in greedy gulps like the Baroness - doesn't actively fight to stay alive. She just sits quietly in her chair all day, like a black hole at the centre of the universe [7]. 

 

But I understand - and share - Lawrence's sense of horror and humiliation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436.

 

[2] Readers interested in the national statistics estimating the number of people (mostly women) in the UK population aged 90 and over, between the years 2002 and 2020, can click here. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward McDonald (16 July 1926), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 495-496. Lines quoted are on p. 496.   

 

[4] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 400.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Ada Clarke (2 August 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 397-398. 

[6] Ibid., p. 398. 

[7] See my poem 'Black Holes' in The Circle of Fragments and Other Verses, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) - or click here to read it on Torpedo the Ark. 

Fragment from the Dementia Diary: Day 2000

Ich und meine Mutter (SA/2021)

  

 

Day 2000 - much like any of the previous 1,999 days spent here (continuously) since 2 April, 2016:

 

08.00: get my mother up, washed, and dressed ...

 

09.00: do my mother's breakfast and administer medication ...

 

10.00: do the shopping and pick up my mother's prescription from chemist ...

 

11.30: start preparing my mother's midday meal ...

 

16.30: start preparing my mother's tea ...

 

19.30: do toast and tea for my mother's supper ...

 

20.00: administer more pills ...

 

21.00: put my mother to bed ...

 

In between the above routine tasks: do the washing up; do the laundry; clean the house; do the gardening; pay the bills; make cups of tea, take my mother to and from the toilet, feed the cat, etc. Very little time to read, write, think, or breathe.  

 

As I said on Day 1, I repeat now: caring is tedious and depressing. Any small joys are fleeting and what we extol as blessing depends on what afflicts us as plight [Heidegger].  

 

 

How Kindness Gives Way to Cruelty

That's gotta hurt! 

 

 

I. Man and Mutt

 

One of the most harrowing scenes in D. H. Lawrence's work appears not in his fiction, but in 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine' ...

In this extraordinary essay, Lawrence tells of how one day a "big, bushy, rather handsome sandy-red dog" wandered on to his New Mexican ranch, clearly in distress, having had an encounter with a porcupine: "his whole muzzle set round with white spines, like some ghastly growth; like an unnatural beard".

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"He waited while I went up to him, wagging his tail and whimpering, and ducking his head, and dancing. He daren't rub his nose with his paws anymore: it hurt too much. I patted his head and looked at his nose, and he whimpered loudly. 

      He must have had thirty quills, or more, sticking out of his nose, all the way round: the white, ugly ends of the quills protruding an inch, sometimes more, sometimes less, from his already swollen, blood-puffed muzzle. 

    [...] Then the fun began. I got him in the yard: and he drank up the whole half-gallon of the chicken's sour milk. Then I started pulling out the quills. He was a big, bushy, handsome dog, but his nerve was gone, and every time I got a quill out, he gave a yelp. Some long quills were fairly easy. But the shorter ones, near his lips, were deep in, and hard to get hold of, and hard to pull out when you did get hold of them. And with every one that came out, came a little spurt of blood and another yelp and writhe.

      The dog wanted the quills out: but his nerve was gone. Every time he saw my hand coming to his nose, he jerked his head away. I quieted him, and stealthily managed to jerk out another quill, with the blood all over my fingers. But with every one that came out, he grew more tiresome. I tried and tried and tried to get hold of another quill, and he jerked and jerked, and writhed and whimpered, and ran under the porch floor."

 

As one might imagine, it was "a curiously unpleasant, nerve-trying job", with the dog whimpering and jerking his head this way and that. And so, after struggling for a couple of hours and extracting some twenty quills, Lawrence gave up: 

 

"It was impossible to quiet the creature, and I had had enough. His nose on the top was clear: a punctured, puffy blood-darkened mess; and his lips were clear. But just on his round little chin [...] was still a bunch of white quills, eight or nine deep in.

      We let him go, and he dived under the porch, and there he lay invisible: save for the end of his bushy, foxy tail, which moved when we came near. Towards noon he emerged, ate up the chicken food, and stood with that doggish look of dejection, and fear, and friendliness, and greediness, wagging his tail.

      But I had had enough.

      'Go home!' I said. 'Go home! Go home to your master, and let him finish for you.'"

      

Unfortunately, the dog doesn't want to go - and it's at this point kindness is superseded by cruelty:

"He was not going to leave the place. 

      And I! I simply did not want him.

      And so I picked up a stone. He dropped his tail, and swerved towards the house. I knew what he was going to do. He was going to dive under the porch, and there stick, haunting the place.

      I dropped my stone, and found a good stick under the cedar tree. [...] 

      I could not bear to have that dog around any more. Going quietly to him, I suddenly gave him one hard hit with the stick, crying  'Go home!' He turned quickly, and the end of the stick caught him on his sore nose. With a fierce yelp, he went off like a wolf, downhill, like a flash, gone. And I stood in the field full of pangs of regret, at having hit him, unintentionally, on his sore nose."

        

 

II. Mann und Mutter

 

I thought of this scene the other morning when attending to my mother, for whom I care. 

 

Admittedly, she's not a big bushy dog and has never required my assistance in removing a face full of porcupine quills. But she is 94 and in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, thus fully dependent upon my help. And she is now inarticulate, like an animal, only able to offer a continuous series of moans and groans and shout out gibberish. 

 

And whilst her nerve hasn't gone, her mind has, making it impossible for me to reason with her, when, for example, trying to wash her, or feed her, or change her dressings and - like the poor creature Lawrence writes of - she won't shut the fuck up and she won't stay still, constantly babbling and twisting this way and that, turning the provision of care into a curiously unpleasant, nerve-trying job ...

 

And there are times when, like Lawrence, I feel I have reached the end of my tether and can't bear to be around my mother; times, even, when I too feel like picking up a large stone or a good stick ...  

 

And that, whilst a terrible confession, is an important realisation: in the end, kindness will always give way to cruelty - which is why abuse is rife within care homes, hospitals, and other institutions in which vulnerable individuals are housed. The suffering of others can trigger violence as a kind of defence mechanism and, ironically, the most inhumane acts are often a sign that one is too sensitive, not that one lacks compassion. 

 

 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 350-52.