DH Lawrence and Embodiment

[Drusus]

I discovered DH Lawrence back in 2019 and have been reading him off and on ever since, mostly from his essays, occasionally from his short stories, never, except once, from his novels. My experience is always the same. At first, Lawrence is refreshing, not only for his ideas but for his unique style. He writes in a circuitous way in a conscious attempt to retvrn to the prophetic or oracular mode, which was supposed to “deliver a set of symbols or images of the real dynamic value, which should set the emotional consciousness of the inquirer, as he pondered them, revolving more and more rapidly, till out of a state of intense emotional absorption the resolve at last formed; or, as we say, a decision was arrived at.” He admires this mode as an antidote to modern thinking, characterized by linearity and goal-directedness, by contrast with the ancient or natural man, for whom “a thought was a completed state of feeling-awareness.”

This is part of Lawrence’s larger project of “re-naturalizing” man, a concern he shares, in part, with Nietzsche. Of the two, he sometimes seems the more explicitly “vitalistic.” He has none of Nietzsche’s admiration for the scientific and cosmopolitan Enlightenment, nor is he much interested in the vision of a Europe united beneath a new aristocracy. He does believe in aristocracy, but an aristocracy composed, not of “superior specimens” or “the well turned out,” but of men and women with a strong mystical connection to the elan vital . For Lawrence, hierarchy flows from greater or lesser degrees of closeness to God, conceived as energy, Source, or living fire. The attempt to make an aristocracy by education or breeding would have struck him as counter-productive. His short story “Sun” made the rounds on Twitter a month or two ago and is probably the best encapsulation of his ideas, along with his essays on aristocracy and on Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. The story has all the essential Lawrentian elements: a woman made nervous and anemic by modernity, in which the logical and social faculties dominate the others; contempt for the pale, watery impotence of modern man; worship of the phallus, of Natural Woman, of “the dark gods in the blood”; redemption through a renewed connection to Life — in this case, through sunbathing. (Lawrence is the first proponent I know of sunning your balls.)

I find all of this sympathetic — at first. But Lawrence becomes increasingly grating as you read him in large quantities. The circularity starts to sound nagging and insistent. Here’s a passage from The Plumed Serpent:

https://ibb.co/Wnb59mJ
https://ibb.co/GCYwstR
https://ibb.co/7kqrZpj
https://ibb.co/6BGwvNg
https://ibb.co/tc4Ngyy

When I read that, I hear someone neurotic, someone insecure. The circling style of expression resembles, not a Psalm or an ode or a saga, but the thought of an anxious person ruminating on a fixed idea. I got about 150 pages into The Plumed Serpent and had to give it up. The same thing happens when I read more than one or two of his essays at a time. There’s something in Lawrence that’s neurotic bordering on hysterical. Gore Vidal called him “self-lacerating.” Lawrence is not connected to the Vital Source, but he wants to be, and he wants to convince himself (and you) that he is. He has a non-embodied man’s idea of embodiment. 

When reading Nietzsche, I never suffer the claustrophobic weariness that inevitably comes from spending too much time with Lawrence. Sometimes his malice or his asceticism makes me long for a kindlier or more cheerful author, but for the most part Nietzsche is and remains exhilarating. I think this is because he balances his Romantic love of the Will with a cool intellect and a healthy, unpretentious sensuality. You can see the latter spelled out explicitly in his remarks on Hafiz and Goethe, but it’s contained in all of his value judgments, which are always formed in terms of the body and the senses. Nietzsche had a genuine appreciation for the limited, the definite. Spengler identified him as the embodiment of Faustian will-to-power, but I think he underestimated how much of Classical man there is in Nietzsche. 

That appreciation seems necessary to any genuine attempt at “re-embodiment.” Without it, the project degenerates into boozy mysticism, anxious self loathing, or platitudes a la Sol Brah at his worst. BAP is a good counter example and has maintained the balance between the body as vessel for Faustian mastery and the body as discreet object which obeys laws of proper form. And Charles Olson may be a good example of a more truly embodied approach to literature:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYxpSjkyAg

I may have more to say later, but this is long enough for now. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on Lawrence, embodiment, and the arts.

[anthony]

I'm also fond of Lawrence's essays, and also only read him in small pieces. I've posted excerpts of his around here before, and can strongly recommend his essays as something to keep around and maybe read one or two of at a time as you feel like it. As you say, he reads like a man struggling, rather than a man who has achieved a new and comfortable balance.

[JohnTrent]

I guess this is a fairly late response, but the aforementioned neuroticism of Lawrence had always impacted my reading of him. Though I do read his essays and value him (even those who dislike him should at least respect him for resurrecting Moby Dick from obscurity), there is something about his novels that repels me.
One thought that continually repeated in my head when reading Lady Chatterley's Lover was that the prose was sickly. There was a malaise protruding through the text, where the world around the characters is filled with carcinogens and soot, and the lavish characters engage in this feeble, idle talk. Even if the conceit of the forbidden romance is supposed to redeem the woman from a hopeless invalid marriage, there is still the factor of hollowness present in the text: the very beginning of the novel establishes the temporary status of love, and though sensuality prevails over the more stolid form of love, it's almost as if sensuality too has been tainted by the novel's world. I was not surprised to figure out that Lawrence was battling illness when writing the novel. 
The reason why Nietzsche triumphs in the praise of vitality, and Lawrence fails in the novel form, could be explained in a few ways. The one I'll focus on for now is what you alluded to, which is the Classical element of Nietzsche. I'd say that his philological background had played a large part (if I recall correctly, he likens a reading of Classical texts to an arduous transformation somewhere in Anti-Education). Nietzsche approached Western problems without involving himself in the time; he is not a Bismarckian, he does not consider himself a socialist of any kind, and he is immune to the craze of moralistic understandings in his time. Lawrence was too haunted by his era to escape unscathed:

"You get into the rhythm of London again, and you tell yourself that it is not dull. And yet you are haunted, all the time, sleeping or walking, with the uncanny feeling: It is dull! It is all dull! This life here is one vast complex of dullness! I am dull! I am being dulled! My spirit is being dulled! My life is dulling down to London dullness" - D.H. Lawrence, Why I Don't Like Living In London (1928)