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Saturday 1 November 2014

Cut off like a doll

No chemise

In or out her chemise, however, doesn’ t make much difference to the modern woman. She’s a finished-off ego, an assertive conscious entity, cut off like a doll from any mystery. And her nudity is about as interesting as a doll’ s. If you can be interested in the nudity of a doll, then jazz on, jazz on!

The same with the men. No matter how they pull their shirts off they never arrive at their own nakedness. They have none. They can only be undressed. Naked they cannot be. Without their clothes on, they are like a dismantled street-car without its advertisements: sort of public article that doesn’t refer to anything.

The ego! Anthropomorphism! Love! What it works out to in the end is that even anthropos disappears, and leaves a sawdust manikin wondrously jazzing.

D.H. Lawrence  ...Love Was Once A Little Boy (1925)

3 comments:

Sam Vega said...

"What it works out to in the end is that even anthropos disappears, and leaves a sawdust manikin wondrously jazzing."

Sounds like a wild party, but I think Anthropos had the right idea by leaving before things got out of hand.

Demetrius said...

Ah, in that period I wonder what kind of shirts he commonly wore? Decent cotton shirts were not cheap and for ordinary people needed to be strong, unlike today's. Then there were "union" shirts, also flannelette ones, but many men ordinarily had woollen ones or if better off linen ones for work. If he wore ones with fixed collars this was then at the expensive end, it was cheaper and often better to use ones that needed separate collars, usually starched for smartness and easy to clean during the day with a quick wipe. There could be a thesis in this.

A K Haart said...

Sam - maybe it's an age thing with Anthropos.

Demetrius - my father-in-law used to tell a story about a chief accountant who wore his work shirt until it was pale yellow with age. Then he took it back to the shop and asked them to take it in part exchange for a new one.