They are the They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.

My God,
the hero is
a
bee!
Hidden lives and other professions by sex workers, anthropologists,
historians, journalists and writers. About new artistic paradigms, or
(not) just about bees and literature.
WRITING AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE
Writing Observations.
Browsing through history and writing seems to support the wild hypothesis.
From recent history, the best known writer - increasingly popular in current
new New Age times - is definitely Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915).
Today we planned to extract honey, but after a couple of days with moderate
summer weather, it is suddenly raining continuously with heavy wind
blasts now and then.
When relying on natural events and phenomena, one can never predict
how and when things will happen. So far nothing new, since Henri Bergson
already dedicated almost his whole philosophy to that, and even the most
popular book on new science, chaos and complexity will tell you the same.
But still we were counting on working with the beehives today... So, let’s sit
down and sublimate our position: we will write and we want to write about
writing and bees. Like, who was doing this, and why, and how?
First of all, we won’t bother you with a full overview of who ever mentioned
a bee in literature since antiquity. Besides, in 2001 Cristopher Hollingsworth
published the remarkable literary study The Insect Metaphor in Literature.
There, he explores from old Greek times to former postmodernism how famous
authors like Homer (the wild bees), Virgil (the domestication), Dante
(ascent to heaven), Milton (the fallen angels) to Conrad, Wells, Huxley, Sartre,
Delillo and many more, were treating the idea of bees and more specifically
the hive within their works. It is an outstanding overview of evolutionary
stylistics, exploring relevant analogies and metaphors, highlighting special
meanings and unique literary functions. Here are some lines from John Milton’s
Paradise Lost (1667)
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides.
The Anthropomorphic Metaphors.
So now we had an autodidactic scientist-teacher, and a renowned writer.
Another crossover historian, writer and activist avant la lettre is, for sure, the
Dutch/English Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). He started with translating
some of Aesop’s fables, for instance ‘The Wasps and the Bees’. He then published
a strange combination of texts, called The Fable of the Bees (1714). It
starts with the poem/fable ‘The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn’d Honest’
from 1705, adding a discussion in prose and some essays to it. As late as 1732
he wrote a second series of comments.
The Fable of the Bees combines a number of socio-political, religious and
economic ideas that caused a lot of offense in England at the time. It uses
the fable of the hive as a starting metaphor for an economic theory that
later would influence Adam Smith. In the poem a bee community is trying
to achieve honesty and virtue through cooperation. But, they lose the hive,
suggesting that personal luxury and consumption benefits the community
more than for instance common savings. He also disagreed on the fact that
virtue would be added by education, observing that evil existed as much
among the rich and educated, who are even more crafty. The texts are written
in a pamphlet-like style with a very direct and open opinion. In these
older works the aesthetic programme seems to be missing. He defends his
opinions. The hive is a mere metaphor for society.
The first historian who would attempt to embellish science would probably
be Jules Michelet (1798-1874). He published a first successful edition,
L’Oiseau (1856), but then wrote a dull and naive, sometimes very inaccurate
and superficial work L’insecte (1857). His motives are inspired by the wish to
write a poetry of science, by adding poetry and philosophy to science. A noble
initiative but exaggerated metaphoric and bombastic, and for that reason
almost unreadable now. How different from the subtle Fabre, the skillful
Maeterlinck and the earlier impassioned Mandeville:
The bee and the ant reveal to us the lofty harmony of the insect. Both, in their high intelligence,
are of superior rank as artists, architects, and the like. The bee is more, a geometer; the ant is
before all remark-able as an educator. The ant is frankly and strongly republican, having no need
of a living and visible symbol of the community, lightly esteeming and governing with sufficient
rudeness the soft and feeble females who perpetuate the race. The bee, on the other hand, more tender
apparently, or less reasoning and more imaginative, finds a moral support in the worship of the common
mother. For her community of virgins it is, so to speak, a religion of love. Among both the ants and
bees maternity is the social principle but fraternity also takes root, nourishes, and springs to a
glorious stature.
(The Insect p. 335)
The Dung-beetle, sated with days, becomes a patriarch and really deserves to do in consideration
of the services rendered.There is a general hygiene that calls for the disappearance, in the shortest
possible time, of every putrid thing. Paris has not yet solved the formidable problem of her refuse,
which sooner or later will become a question of life or death for the monstrous city.
One asks one’s self whether the centre of light be not doomed to be extinguished one day
in the reeking exhalations of a soil saturated with rottenness. What this agglomeration of millions
of men cannot obtain, with all its treasures of wealth and talent, the smallest hamlet possesses
without going to any expense or even troubling to think about it. Nature, so lavish of her cares
in respect of rural health, is indifferent to the welfare of cities, if not actively hostile to it.
She has created for the fields two classes of scavengers, whom nothing wearies, whom nothing repels...
(The Life and Love of the Insect p. 113)
Interestingly, Hollingsworth analyzes the theme across history as an active
rhetorical medium, a visual language tool bringing out different attitudes
about ‘otherness’ and the position of the (writer as) observer. Of course
the hive represents mostly the relationship between individual and whole
within the historical contexts of the prevailing social order and ideal state
models, the hive being the dramatic form that symbolizes the differences
and analogies. Ok-ok, I guess only a few of you reading out there will still be
interested by now.
He definitely is no Darwin, investigating the hexagonal shapes of the honeycomb,
fruitlessly trying to find the answer where to place nature’s instinct vs.
intelligence. No big research agenda for Fabre. He is just looking at insects,
trying to find out what they are doing, building a narrative and explaining.
Without decoration, except for the writer/observer, people seem to be absent..
Here is when he finally talks about Paris:
And soon the weather will be better anyway, and then we can stop writing
to make honey anyway. But in the meantime...
Definitely both a teacher and writer, and an amazing autodidact in entomology,
he became famous for his works on insects. Darwin would call him “the
inimitable observer”, though Fabre rejected evolution in favour of creationism,
not in the biblical sense but rather because he simply mistrusted systems
and big theories. Reading through ‘Les Insectes’ and ‘Souvenirs entomologiques’
one encounters a special style: a perfectly balanced, very clear
language in-between accuracy and lyrics. Here no difficult scientific terms,
no dramatic rhetorics either. His accounts of bees and wasps, spiders and
ants, are a questioning observation of the species within their natural environment,
related sometimes to a story on how he found it (on a walk, on a
school trip, ..).
Wasps, Human Sex, and the difference.
Lately, we came across an astonishing fact that immediately was met with a
lot of scepticism. Somehow the American Museum of Natural History in New
Is this still reflected nowadays on one hand in the bulk of popular scientific
writing, some ghostwriting for scientists and on the other hand in the writ
ing of horoscopes and gardening articles, books for TV cooks, or travel diaries?
Maybe we don’t have to see this - from within literature itself - as a popular
“divertissement” or escape strategy for not having to write the “true”
great works... but rather as an experiment by the writer, making a new genre,
a new textual expressivity, like sonification in music and visualization in
movies and interactives. Playing with scientific data: interdisciplinary, multimodal,
another content than expected, another imagination.
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Footnote 1.
Even Cole Porter would jump on the hype in the song ‘Too Darn Hot’ for the
musical ‘Kiss Me Kate’ (1948):
According to the Kinsey report ev’ry average man you know
much prefers to play his favorite sport when the temperature is low
but when the thermometer goes way up and the weather is sizzling hot
Mister GOB for his squab, a marine for his queen, a G.I. for his cutie-pie is not
Cause it’s too too too darn hot, It’s too darn hot, It’s too darn hot
Footnote 2.
For the complete sequence:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16664854/Bee-Poems-by-Sylvia-Plath
Unto Today.
Maybe there is more around, and this is only a modest attempt to see what
is to be learned from more than a century of interdisciplinarity and literature.
As we mentioned above, speech and language, together with for instance
sonification and visualization, could yield an original and combined
contribution to the arts. Provided it develops the appropriate tools, communication
styles, open and diverse forms with original points of view. The
different things that really make a difference, and not only promise to. But,
every hypothesis here has to remain a little utopia too. The hope is that more
original works will emerge, and new genres will develop before they can
be pinpointed and attached to norms, only to evolve into a creative myriad
of possibilities. Contradictions and differences, dissonance and noise, new
patterns and structures, new languages... But definitely, the experimental
exploration of a new artistic activity, related to scientific paradigms can be
realized with more verve than we hear, see, and read nowadays.
Back to some fiction. In 2009 the Canadian author Margaret Atwood published
The Year of the Flood. It is an apocalyptic and yet hopeful chaotic story
about ecosects, posthuman society, genetic technology, or whatever is now
at hand that will run out of hand. The Gardeners are central to the events.
And the bees.
Suddenly jumps up and goes to the window. ‘Ah, reminds me of my work
today’ ... ‘Yes! The rain has stopped, have to go’.. ‘So, bye, and better read the
book when you have time’ ... ‘Really have to go now, it is getting dry outside!’
... ‘Cannot spoil the fun by telling you the end of the story anyway’ ...
‘Ciao’... (standing in front of the window) ‘Euh... oh no, now it is getting dark,
so no chance today to open the hives and centrifuge the honey’ ... ‘Damn!’...
goes back to the desk and sits down...
Ok, I am back, so let’s end in beauty. Let’s sing a last song before we part. And
who better to voice it than the distinctive Sylvia Plath, who wrote 5 poems
shortly before her tragic suicide, dealing with bees, other people, her own
fears and vulnerabilities,... All of a fragile beauty.
From the poem THE BEE MEETING [Footnote 2]:
Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the
villagers----
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.
I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my
knees.
Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.
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