A Tale of Dead Birds & in Defence of Theia Mania
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Apollo Breaks His Silence: A Tale of Dead Birds & In defence of theia mania: a preliminary study of the sacred libido of poetry by Viacheslav Kovalenko A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Film and Creative Writing School of English, Drama and Creative Studies College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract The creative portion of the PhD focuses on the story of three protagonists, Gaspar, Kevin and Johnny, and their journey to discover their true selves in an authoritarian reality. They start as ordinary citizens of the Republic, and then as the truth of their surroundings and themselves begins to be revealed to them, they begin to awaken politically. The critical essay explores the themes of poetry and truth and their potential impact on the world of political ideas. It argues for political usefulness of poetry, broadly defined as inspired speech, as the medium of social, idealogical and aesthetic renewal, and for Dionysian elements of mystery and ecstasy as necessary to complement the Apollonian, reason-based aspects of conduct. To do so I have used the case of Pythia as an inspired speaker, and Plato’s Republic (2007) as the telos of political development, supplemented with insights of Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilisation (1998). I have referred to a wide range of philosophers and critical thinkers, chief of them in spirit if not in the particular themes I investigate, Nietzsche, to see how the inspired speech and the telos of the Republic interact and how they might reach synthesis. Table of Contents Apollo Breaks His Silence 1 Chapter I: Eutopia or the Comedy of Folly 2 Baptism 3 The Howl of a Princely Werewolf 25 The Pollen of Purity 49 The Overhuman Centipede 69 Le Grand Envoûtement 72 Chapter II: The Tarantella of Water Circles or Tarantula of Revelation 88 Noondreams of Laconia 89 Inside a glass cage: a painting in rime 104 The diary of a free man 123 The overdose 146 Before the Rooster Crows Today… 176 The last word 182 In defence of theia mania: a preliminary study of the sacred libido of poetry 188 Introduction 189 Chapter 1 The Theia Mania of Poetry 209 Chapter 2: The Ecstasy of Truth 224 Chapter 3 Liberation of Eros or the Triumph of Phoibos Apollon 243 Conclusion 255 Bibliography 257 Apollo Breaks His Silence A Tale of Dead Birds To Apollo the Luminous 1 of 263 Chapter I: Eutopia or the Comedy of Folly Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή Iliad, Homer There is a state of nature into which any real change, any real life-bud is always born; a testicle where the caviar of Cosmos is stored, where it needs to gestate for angels inside to grow beaks to burst into reality wherever the shell is thinnest. The asphalt is wet and the air is dark-grey, shades of light dance on the micro-lakes with rainbow legs. It is warm and fresh, and the newborn future welcomes you with a smile. It, the future, has already begun, but no one around you knows it yet. You are its sole initiate, and you cannot hold back the smile that forces itself outside your mouth like larvae for just a moment, for a moment that flickers in flames and blackens... 2 of 263 Baptism O sweet cautery, O delightful wound! O gentle hand! O delicate touch that tastes of eternal life and pays every debt! In killing you changed death to life. — St John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love Looking at his naked body covered by water, Johnny admired the man he now was. He felt almost completely comfortable and content. Only at the back his mind there was a slight, almost imperceptible, buzzing irritant, calling to him. It all began when he moved his leg and his genitals brushed over his thigh under the water that a memory emerged from the black new moon ocean of his mind like a bubble bursts on the surface of a remote swamp. It was a memory concerning his father. It was raining that day horribly, so much so that Johnny was almost as wet under his clothes, and the clothes chafed his skin raw that day. This was the first time Johnny’s father took him hunting. They were hunting a deer. It was only partially legal. Well, it was not legal at all, but no one would catch them, not this high up in the mountains, not this far from the life blood of the state bureaucracy, not with the villagers down the slope benefitting from the contraband meat, the surplus of which his father sold them; and paralyzed by the superstitious fear of his mother, the witch, as they called her, the villagers never thought to report them. From his father Johnny learnt, despite himself, that wind was his friend. You could use it to prevent the beast from sensing you. 3 of 263 He would, Johnny decided, go into the streets every day and walk around for six or seven hours until he happened to meet his destiny. It was a modern version of a journey undertaken by heroes of yore. That was very wise: the young blood did not have the chance to curdle, the young flesh would not begin rotting on its bones by the tender age of twenty five, as it commonly happens today: the hair was thick, and the bones were hard. Johnny would make an adventure of this wretched city. Johnny submerged his face in the celadon water of the bathtub. From above, he imagined, it looked androgynous, plastic-perfect, lips marked with a tinge of faint pink, stained with trickles of black, as if shooting from the oil well underneath. The face tensed up, and so did the water: a barely visible reaction of the commotion of spasm. Waves hit the tiled wall, and a droplet was catapulted over the rim onto the bathroom floor, but Johnny didn’t see that. A storm, as if by the will of Poseidon, depressed the domestic sea. Any Titanic would have sunk –– sunk, and have been devoured with all its music, hopes and steel. Like a basket of straw dogs. Charybdis has awoken. A vision of primal terror: a naked humanoid figure raised above the water, waterfalls off every slope shooting into the abyss of space, desperate for the embrace of gravity, shooting downwards like cannon balls blind bombing the empty space. A fly gets washed off the wall into the whirlpool. Its tender wings wet and wrecked; a casualty in the war of movement. It is unbecoming of kings to lower the eyes. Johnny was still sleepy and the unfortunate passing of a housefly went by invisibly. He stepped out of the bath and grabbed the purple towel off the battery. He enjoyed every curve of his body, as the towel massaged his skin vigorously so that it even reddened a little. It was late enough that no one else was home. Johnny enjoyed his recently discovered liberty, his burning innocence: he was young once more, and the last couple of years he was thinking he was already old. Were it a different time, he would have died in a war with a boisterous song salty on his lips: the taste of blood, tears, and sweat. Bodies are salt caves. 4 of 263 It would take Johnny at least twenty minutes to cleanly shave, slather himself with citrus body butter, to apply the necessary salves to his face and spray his wrists and sides of the neck with the mixture of perfumes he applied every day, as the most optimal choice. It was to him like a favorite undershirt, except he could wear it everyday, and only smell nicer for it. Really: a walk is always a journey. If you have not yet died inside, you know this. Every time you go outside you can die, you can make friends. To make friends is give opportunity for disaster to enter your life. In this sense disasters make life meaningful, worth living. Every time you live in your life, every time you choose to be, you put everything on the line. The cowardly, lesser folk want a safer world. They want to neuter God, but they only neuter themselves. Johnny had little but disdain for that kind; for people who are simply waiting for their deaths. Let them die, if they refuse to live! Johnny was still fresh, at twenty-three, headless, with a hurricane in the place of his handsome head. He would rather be burnt alive than become like all the walking corpses. He belonged to the wilderness of mountains, and he brought them here, to the city. He was getting a little stiff thinking about the exciting life that awaited him. He was drunk on opportunity, on his pulsating potential. Johnny was not worried. He was ready to die at war, like any noble young man. Johnny had little ambition. It is ambition that tasks you with the fear of death, with your commonness and rudeness.