Women in Love - Articulation, Hamlet and Arnie

He turned in confusion. There was always confusion in speech. Yet it must be spoken. Whichever way one moved, if one were to move forwards, one must break a way through. And to know, to give utterance, was to break a way through the walls of the prison as the infant in labour strives through the walls of the womb. There is no new movement now, without the breaking through of the old body, deliberately, in knowledge, in the struggle to get out.

[BUT]

...One shouldn't talk when one is tired and wretched. One Hamletises, and it seems a lie. -p.161, Women in Love, DH Lawrence

'Hamletises' - ie. Talks to one's self too much overthinking with useless
deliberation thereby neglecting action; something Arnie's Hamlet avoids magnificently, CHECK IT OUT on YOUTUBE by clicking the pic below:

Women in Love - The Death Instinct, Love and Tennyson

For one of my final undergrad modules in English I did a course on Freud and Shakespeare, which was by far the most interesting of the special subjects talking of repressed desires and such things, during which time we touched on The Death Instinct or Death Wish.  To summarise, Dreams are a vehicle of wish fulfillment, but why then, as Freud observed, were patients reliving traumatic events through their dreams, especially those returning from the war with no physical injuries.  This prompted a revision of Dream Theory.  What followed determined that the repetition of events painful to the psyche were in fact an attempt at nullifying the trauma through a kind of desensitising, ie. the more you hear a funny joke the less funny it gets or the more you watch a horror film the less scary it becomes, therefore the more you relive a traumatic experience the less truamatic it becomes.  There are also elements of control attached to such an exercise so that subjects are perhaps seeking to impose control over the traumatic event.  Now, the death instint is actually manifested in this desire for negating stimulus, in effect to be completely desensitised, returning to a state of non-being.  Controversial.

The poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson is fantastically fruitful when it comes to applying these theories.  But first, Lawrence's Women in Love, just after a young character is swept away by a flowing stream and lost forever:

'Do you think they are dead?' she cried in a high voice, to make
herself heard.

'Yes,' he replied.

'Isn't it horrible!'

He paid no heed. They walked up the hill, further and further away from
the noise.

'Do you mind very much?' she asked him.

'I don't mind about the dead,' he said, 'once they are dead. The worst
of it is, they cling on to the living, and won't let go.'

She pondered for a time.

'Yes,' she said. 'The FACT of death doesn't really seem to matter much,
does it?'

'No,' he said. 'What does it matter if Diana Crich is alive or dead?'

'Doesn't it?' she said, shocked.

'No, why should it? Better she were dead--she'll be much more real.
She'll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, negated
thing.'

'You are rather horrible,' murmured Ursula.

'No! I'd rather Diana Crich were dead. Her living somehow, was all
wrong. As for the young man, poor devil--he'll find his way out quickly
instead of slowly. Death is all right--nothing better.'

'Yet you don't want to die,' she challenged him.

He was silent for a time. Then he said, in a voice that was frightening
to her in its change:

'I should like to be through with it--I should like to be through with
the death process.'

'And aren't you?' asked Ursula nervously.

They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees. Then he said,
slowly, as if afraid:

'There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which isn't
death. One is tired of the life that belongs to death--our kind of
life. But whether it is finished, God knows. I want love that is like
sleep, like being born again, vulnerable as a baby that just comes into
the world.'

Ursula listened, half attentive, half avoiding what he said. She seemed
to catch the drift of his statement, and then she drew away. She wanted
to hear, but she did not want to be implicated. She was reluctant to
yield there, where he wanted her, to yield as it were her very
identity.

'Why should love be like sleep?' she asked sadly.

'I don't know. So that it is like death--I DO want to die from this
life--and yet it is more than life itself. One is delivered over like a
naked infant from the womb, all the old defences and the old body gone,
and new air around one, that has never been breathed before.' -p.160

For further illumination read Tennyson's 'The Kraken':

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.  

Read also, 'Tears idle tears, I know not what they mean':

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

   Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

   Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

   Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

An excellent poem full of that confusion in longing for something greater which seems to lie before existence perhaps.

Now back to Lawrence's Women in Love:


Ursula, now pining for the man she is in love with, Rupert Birkin the man who wants something more than love, like Birkin expresses a peculiar longing for the peace and tranquility afforded by death, employing a wonderful metaphor that seems to echo Tennyson's marvellous poem 'The Lotus-Eaters':

The knowledge of the imminence of
death was like a drug...
She knew all she had to know,
she had experienced all she had to experience, she was fulfilled in a
kind of bitter ripeness, there remained only to fall from the tree into
death...
After all, when one was fulfilled, one was happiest in falling into
death, as a bitter fruit plunges in its ripeness downwards. Death is a
great consummation, a consummating experience. - pp.164-5, DHLawrence, Women in Love

Compare to Tennyson's 'The Lotus-Eaters' published almost 90 years before WIL:

The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,

...All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Women in Love - Prufrock's White Flannel Trousers

A passage that evokes some Eliot, another interesting connection with Prufrock:

He laughed. Gudrun looked aside, feeling she was being belittled. People were standing about in groups, some women were sitting in the shade of the walnut tree, with cups of tea in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was hurrying round, some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and tried to be witty with the young damsels. 'Why,' thought Gudrun churlishly, 'don't they have the manners to put their coats on, and not to assume such intimacy in their appearance.' She abhorred the ordinary young man, with his hair plastered back, and his easy-going chumminess. -pp.135-6  

These are exactly the sort of men Prufrock aspires to:

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

Read the full poem, Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' - http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/eliot.html  

Women in Love - Something Beyond Love

Of the many plights in this novel, finding an escape from human constructs seems to be at the very heart. While listening to Radio 4, purely because music on the radio is so damn awful these days, I heard a discourse with JG BallJ.G.Ballardard in which he talked of the hollowness of human existence and how apparent it became to him that social conventions and everything we live by is artificial because at a moment's notice it can be brushed aside, for example during times of war. We are therefore compelled to really question what life has to offer us, he says, some turn to drugs others turn to something else which I forget, but ultimately these are false and temporary remedies which fail to really get to the heart of life. I now leave you with Rupert Birkin digging himself a nice hole to curl up inside by himself as he quite romantically seeks something beyond love - but it can't really be romantic now can it:

--if we are going to know each
other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to make a
relationship, even of friendship, there must be something final and
infallible about it.'

There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did
not answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have
spoken.

Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost bitterly,
giving himself away:

'I can't say it is love I have to offer--and it isn't love I want. It
is something much more impersonal and harder--and rarer.'

There was a silence, out of which she said:

'You mean you don't love me?'

She suffered furiously, saying that.

'Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that isn't true.
I don't know. At any rate, I don't feel the emotion of love for
you--no, and I don't want to. Because it gives out in the last issues.'

'Love gives out in the last issues?' she asked, feeling numb to the
lips.

'Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of
love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any
emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude
ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The
root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that
does NOT meet and mingle, and never can.'

She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in
its abstract earnestness.

'And you mean you can't love?' she asked, in trepidation.

'Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is
not love.'

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she
could not submit.

'But how do you know--if you have never REALLY loved?' she asked.

'It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is
further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of
vision, some of them.'

'Then there is no love,' cried Ursula.

'Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there IS no
love.'

Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half
rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:

'Then let me go home--what am I doing here?'

'There is the door,' he said. 'You are a free agent.'

He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung
motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.

'If there is no love, what is there?' she cried, almost jeering.

'Something,' he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all
his might.

'What?'

He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her
while she was in this state of opposition.

'There is,' he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; 'a final me which
is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final
you. And it is there I would want to meet you--not in the emotional,
loving plane--but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms
of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly
strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there
could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there,
because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite
inhuman,--so there can be no calling to book, in any form
whatsoever--because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted,
and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that
which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing,
giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.'

Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless,
what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.

'It is just purely selfish,' she said.

'If it is pure, yes. But it isn't selfish at all. Because I don't KNOW
what I want of you. I deliver MYSELF over to the unknown, in coming to
you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the
unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast
off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that
which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.'

She pondered along her own line of thought.

'But it is because you love me, that you want me?' she persisted.

'No it isn't. It is because I believe in you--if I DO believe in you.'

'Aren't you sure?' she laughed, suddenly hurt.

He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she said.

'Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn't be here saying this,'
he replied. 'But that is all the proof I have. I don't feel any very
strong belief at this particular moment.'

She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and
faithlessness.

'But don't you think me good-looking?' she persisted, in a mocking
voice.

He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking.

'I don't FEEL that you're good-looking,' he said.

'Not even attractive?' she mocked, bitingly.

He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation.

'Don't you see that it's not a question of visual appreciation in the
least,' he cried. 'I don't WANT to see you. I've seen plenty of women,
I'm sick and weary of seeing them. I want a woman I don't see.'

'I'm sorry I can't oblige you by being invisible,' she laughed.

'Yes,' he said, 'you are invisible to me, if you don't force me to be
visually aware of you. But I don't want to see you or hear you.'

'What did you ask me to tea for, then?' she mocked.

But he would take no notice of her. He was talking to himself.

'I want to find you, where you don't know your own existence, the you
that your common self denies utterly. But I don't want your good looks,
and I don't want your womanly feelings, and I don't want your thoughts
nor opinions nor your ideas--they are all bagatelles to me.'

'You are very conceited, Monsieur,' she mocked. 'How do you know what
my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas? You don't even
know what I think of you now.'

'Nor do I care in the slightest.'

'I think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you love me,
and you go all this way round to do it.'

'All right,' he said, looking up with sudden exasperation. 'Now go away
then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious
persiflage.'

'Is it really persiflage?' she mocked, her face really relaxing into
laughter. She interpreted it, that he had made a deep confession of
love to her. But he was so absurd in his words, also.

They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and elated like a
child. His concentration broke, he began to look at her simply and
naturally.

'What I want is a strange conjunction with you--' he said quietly; 'not
meeting and mingling--you are quite right--but an equilibrium, a pure
balance of two single beings--as the stars balance each other.'

She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness was always
rather ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made her feel unfree and
uncomfortable. Yet she liked him so much. But why drag in the stars.

'Isn't this rather sudden?' she mocked.

He began to laugh.

'Best to read the terms of the contract, before we sign,' he said.

A young grey cat that had been sleeping on the sofa jumped down and
stretched, rising on its long legs, and arching its slim back. Then it
sat considering for a moment, erect and kingly. And then, like a dart,
it had shot out of the room, through the open window-doors, and into
the garden. -pp.123-24

I have certainly shared Birkin's plight in escaping cliche, since the damn thing lingers behind every thought threatening its sincerity. Know what I mean?

Women in Love - Between the Desire and the Spasm falls The Shadow

On many occasions, usually prolonged and sustained till resolution, I have felt paralysed by the anxiety of an obligation to be doing something with my life, to be producing something, industrious, full of purpose and focus.  And it is because of this overwhelming anxiety that I have in some cases failed to act and do as deliberately as I perhaps could and should have done, in fact restricting myself by looking for well worn paths to productivity.  As with many of these cuttings, the following conversation fills me with a nice sense of comfort both in its discussion of my feeling and in a fundamental sense of empowering me with a further ability to articulate these feelings afforded by the diverse use of language - something which I hope all these cuttings in some way facilitate.

'I DO enjoy things—don't you?' she asked.

'Oh yes! But it infuriates me that I can't get right, at the really growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I CAN'T get straight anyhow. I don't know what really to DO. One must do something somewhere.'

'Why should you always be DOING?' she retorted. 'It is so plebeian. I think it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing but just be oneself, like a walking flower.'

'I quite agree,' he said, 'if one has burst into blossom. But I can't get my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is blighted in the bud, or has got the smother-fly, or it isn't nourished. Curse it, it isn't even a bud. It is a contravened knot.' -pp.106-107

I especially like the final metaphor.  I wonder also if Lawrence is not only talking about the general human condition but also differentiating between the genders.  Regardless, a fantastic poem to read for more thought provoking sentiments on action and inaction is T.S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' which has haunted me for many many years.  Here's a snippet followed by a link to the full poem:

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/

Women in Love - Rotten to the Core

'The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush—and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn't true that they have any significance—their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.'

'But there ARE good people,' protested Ursula.

'Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.'

...

'Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.' -p.107

Sodom |ˈsädəm|
a town in ancient Palestine, probably south of the Dead Sea. According to Gen. 19:24 it was destroyed by fire from heaven, together with Gomorrah, for the wickedness of its inhabitants.
• [as n. ] ( a Sodom) a wicked or depraved place.

Women in Love - The World without Men, Hitler's Great Idea and a Rain to Wash away the Scum

 

  'So you'd like everybody in the world destroyed?' said Ursula.

      'I should indeed.'[said Birkin]

      'And the world empty of people?'

      'Yes truly. You yourself, don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?'

      The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to consider her own proposition. And really it WAS attractive: a clean, lovely, humanless world. It was the REALLY desirable. Her heart hesitated, and exulted. But still, she was dissatisfied with HIM.

      'But,' she objected, 'you'd be dead yourself, so what good would it do you?'

      'I would die like a shot, to know that the earth would really be cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeing thought. Then there would NEVER be another foul humanity created, for a universal defilement.'

      'No,' said Ursula, 'there would be nothing.'

      'What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? You flatter yourself. There'd be everything.'

      'But how, if there were no people?'

      'Do you think that creation depends on MAN! It merely doesn't. There are the trees and the grass and birds. I much prefer to think of the lark rising up in the morning upon a human-less world. Man is a mistake, he must go. There is the grass, and hares and adders, and the unseen hosts, actual angels that go about freely when a dirty humanity doesn't interrupt them—and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.'

      It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy. Of course it was only a pleasant fancy. She herself knew too well the actuality of humanity, its hideous actuality. She knew it could not disappear so cleanly and conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, a long and hideous way. Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal soul knew it well.

      'If only man was swept off the face of the earth, creation would go on so marvellously, with a new start, non-human. Man is one of the mistakes of creation—like the ichthyosauri. If only he were gone again, think what lovely things would come out of the liberated days;—things straight out of the fire.'

'But man will never be gone,' she said, with insidious, diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence. 'The world will go with him.'

      'Ah no,' he answered, 'not so. I believe in the proud angels and the demons that are our fore-runners. They will destroy us, because we are not proud enough. The ichthyosauri were not proud: they crawled and floundered as we do. And besides, look at elder-flowers and bluebells—they are a sign that pure creation takes place—even the butterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage—it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings. It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.' -pp.108-109

This section with Rupert expressing his frustration at being trapped within the confines of the human condition, no doubt exacerbated by his earlier dreamy naturist experience in the fields, immediately strikes a chord because, I think, it is so poignantly true.  It also makes me think of similar expressions of disgust with humanity, although very different in presentation, the sentiment is perhaps extremely similar:

TRAVIS (V.O.)
(monotone)April 10, 1972. Thank God for the rain which has helped wash 
the garbage and trash off the sidewalks.

TRAVIS' POV of sleazy midtown side street: Bums, hookers, junkies.

I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the fuckin' toilet. 

- Travis Bickle, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Screenplay Paul 

Schrader 

Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever. 

- Bill Hicks famously erupted with this incisive comment during a gig 

in 1989 in Chicago

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDrgwZsGC9A (Watch it here)

Women in Love - Man and Nature

After Rupert Birkin's outburst denying Hermione her sentimental argument for peace, love, equality and all that, there follows a very funny moment where, as Berkin doses with his head in a book, Hermione, possessed, grabs a solid jewel paperweight ball and smacks him on the head with it.  She then collapses on the couch and herself drifts off for a moment.  The following passage then picks up as Birkin somehow unsurprised by the incident backs away from her and sublimely falls in love with nature reinforcing a disdain for humanity, magnificent stuff:

Birkin, barely conscious, and yet perfectly direct in his motion, went out of the house and straight across the park, to the open country, to
the hills. The brilliant day had become overcast, spots of rain were
falling. He wandered on to a wild valley-side, where were thickets of
hazel, many flowers, tufts of heather, and little clumps of young
firtrees, budding with soft paws. It was rather wet everywhere, there
was a stream running down at the bottom of the valley, which was
gloomy, or seemed gloomy. He was aware that he could not regain his
consciousness, that he was moving in a sort of darkness.

Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was
overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them
all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his
clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly
among the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the
arm-pits, lying down and letting them touch his belly, his breasts. It
was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over him, he seemed to saturate
himself with their contact.

But they were too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of
young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs
beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little
cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their
clusters of soft-sharp needles. There was a thistle which pricked him
vividly, but not too much, because all his movements were too
discriminate and soft. To lie down and roll in the sticky, cool young
hyacinths, to lie on one's belly and cover one's back with handfuls of
fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and more
beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one's thigh
against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel
the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to
clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its
hardness, its vital knots and ridges--this was good, this was all very
good, very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would
satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling
into one's blood. How fortunate he was, that there was this lovely,
subtle, responsive vegetation, waiting for him, as he waited for it;
how fulfilled he was, how happy!

As he dried himself a little with his handkerchief, he thought about
Hermione and the blow. He could feel a pain on the side of his head.
But after all, what did it matter? What did Hermione matter, what did
people matter altogether? There was this perfect cool loneliness, so
lovely and fresh and unexplored. Really, what a mistake he had made,
thinking he wanted people, thinking he wanted a woman. He did not want
a woman--not in the least. The leaves and the primroses and the trees,
they were really lovely and cool and desirable, they really came into
the blood and were added on to him. He was enrichened now immeasurably,
and so glad.

It was quite right of Hermione to want to kill him. What had he to do
with her? Why should he pretend to have anything to do with human
beings at all? Here was his world, he wanted nobody and nothing but the
lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, and himself, his own living
self.

It was necessary to go back into the world. That was true. But that did
not matter, so one knew where one belonged. He knew now where he
belonged. This was his place, his marriage place. The world was
extraneous.

He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he
preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his
own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world,
which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of
his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.

As for the certain grief he felt at the same time, in his soul, that
was only the remains of an old ethic, that bade a human being adhere to
humanity. But he was weary of the old ethic, of the human being, and of
humanity. He loved now the soft, delicate vegetation, that was so cool
and perfect. He would overlook the old grief, he would put away the old
ethic, he would be free in his new state.

He was aware of the pain in his head becoming more and more difficult
every minute. He was walking now along the road to the nearest station.
It was raining and he had no hat. But then plenty of cranks went out
nowadays without hats, in the rain.

He wondered again how much of his heaviness of heart, a certain
depression, was due to fear, fear lest anybody should have seen him
naked lying against the vegetation. What a dread he had of mankind, of
other people! It amounted almost to horror, to a sort of dream
terror--his horror of being observed by some other people. If he were
on an island, like Alexander Selkirk, with only the creatures and the
trees, he would be free and glad, there would be none of this
heaviness, this misgiving. He could love the vegetation and be quite
happy and unquestioned, by himself. -pp.90-92

Women in Love - The Delusion of Equality

'IF,' said Hermione at last, 'we could only realise, that in the SPIRIT
we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers there--the rest
wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping and envy and
this struggle for power, which destroys, only destroys.'

This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately the party
rose from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round
in bitter declamation, saying:

'It is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We are all
different and unequal in spirit--it is only the SOCIAL differences that
are based on accidental material conditions. We are all abstractly or
mathematically equal, if you like. Every man has hunger and thirst, two
eyes, one nose and two legs. We're all the same in point of number. But
spiritually, there is pure difference and neither equality nor
inequality counts. It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must
found a state. Your democracy is an absolute lie--your brotherhood of
man is a pure falsity, if you apply it further than the mathematical
abstraction. We all drank milk first, we all eat bread and meat, we all
want to ride in motor-cars--therein lies the beginning and the end of
the brotherhood of man. But no equality.

'But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with equality with any
other man or woman? In the spirit, I am as separate as one star is from
another, as different in quality and quantity. Establish a state on
THAT. One man isn't any better than another, not because they are
equal, but because they are intrinsically OTHER, that there is no term
of comparison. The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen to be
far better than another, all the inequality you can imagine is there by
nature. I want every man to have his share in the world's goods, so
that I am rid of his importunity, so that I can tell him: "Now you've
got what you want--you've got your fair share of the world's gear. Now,
you one-mouthed fool, mind yourself and don't obstruct me."'
...
'It SOUNDS like megalomania, Rupert,' said Gerald, genially. -p.87-88

Women in Love - Inner Conflicts; Purity versus Obscenity

'Julius is somewhat insane. On the one hand he's
had religious mania, and on the other, he is fascinated by obscenity.
Either he is a pure servant, washing the feet of Christ, or else he is
making obscene drawings of Jesus--action and reaction--and between the
two, nothing. He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl,
with a baby face, on the one hand, and on the other, he MUST have the
Pussum, just to defile himself with her.'

'That's what I can't make out,' said Gerald. 'Does he love her, the
Pussum, or doesn't he?'

'He neither does nor doesn't. She is the harlot, the actual harlot of
adultery to him. And he's got a craving to throw himself into the filth
of her. Then he gets up and calls on the name of the lily of purity,
the baby-faced girl, and so enjoys himself all round. It's the old
story--action and reaction, and nothing between.'- p.80

Women in Love - Self Importance and the First Person Singular

 '...If you are of high importance to humanity you are of high importance to yourself.That is why you work so hard at the mines. If you can produce coal to cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five thousand times more important than if you cooked only your own dinner.'

'I suppose I am,' laughed Gerald.

'Can't you see,' said Birkin, 'that to help my neighbour to eat is no more than eating myself. "I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat"--and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.' - pp.44-45

Women in Love - Change

Birkin shrugged his shoulders.

'I think the people who say they want a new religion are the last to
accept anything new. They want novelty right enough. But to stare
straight at this life that we've brought upon ourselves, and reject it,
absolutely smash up the old idols of ourselves, that we sh'll never do.
You've got very badly to want to get rid of the old, before anything
new will appear--even in the self.'

'When we really want to go for
something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of
proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for
self-important people.' - pp.43-44

Women in Love - The Accident of Murdering One's Brother

Gerald Crich's past has quite a peculiar if not tragic event made all the more curious by the thoughts of the other characters.  I'm not sure really what to make of it, but am sure there are some profound thoughts and judgments contained within concerning fate and accident, subconscious desire and accepted behaviour, and specifically the character of Gerald Crich.  [All Comments welcome as always] 

There was such a thing as pure accident, and the consequences did not attach to one, even though one had killed one's brother in such wise. Gerald as a boy had accidentally killed his brother. What then? Why seek to draw a brand and a curse across the life that had caused the accident? A man can live by accident, and die by accident. Or can he not? Is every man's life subject to pure accident, is it only the race, the genus, the species, that has a universal reference? Or is this not true, is there no such thing as pure accident? Has EVERYTHING that happens a universal significance? Has it? Birkin, pondering as he stood there, had forgotten Mrs Crich, as she had forgotten him. He did not believe that there was any such thing as accident. It all hung together, in the deepest sense. - p.20

AND LATER THE LADIES GOSSIP:

'You know he shot his brother?' said Ursula.

'Shot his brother?' cried Gudrun, frowning as if in disapprobation.

'Didn't you know? Oh yes!--I thought you knew. He and his brother were
playing together with a gun. He told his brother to look down the gun,
and it was loaded, and blew the top of his head off. Isn't it a
horrible story?'

'How fearful!' cried Gudrun. 'But it is long ago?'

'Oh yes, they were quite boys,' said Ursula. 'I think it is one of the
most horrible stories I know.'

'And he of course did not know that the gun was loaded?'

'Yes. You see it was an old thing that had been lying in the stable for
years. Nobody dreamed it would ever go off, and of course, no one
imagined it was loaded. But isn't it dreadful, that it should happen?'

'Frightful!' cried Gudrun. 'And isn't it horrible too to think of such
a thing happening to one, when one was a child, and having to carry the
responsibility of it all through one's life. Imagine it, two boys
playing together--then this comes upon them, for no reason
whatever--out of the air. Ursula, it's very frightening! Oh, it's one
of the things I can't bear. Murder, that is thinkable, because there's
a will behind it. But a thing like that to HAPPEN to one--'

'Perhaps there WAS an unconscious will behind it,' said Ursula. 'This
playing at killing has some primitive DESIRE for killing in it, don't
you think?'

'Desire!' said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. 'I can't see that
they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said to the other,
"You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see what
happens." It seems to me the purest form of accident.'

'No,' said Ursula. 'I couldn't pull the trigger of the emptiest gun in
the world, not if some-one were looking down the barrel. One
instinctively doesn't do it--one can't.'

Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement.

'Of course,' she said coldly. 'If one is a woman, and grown up, one's
instinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that applies to a couple of
boys playing together.'

Her voice was cold and angry.

Women in Love - Sensation versus Knowledge

'Do you really think, Rupert,' she asked, as if Ursula were not
present, 'do you really think it is worth while? Do you really think
the children are better for being roused to consciousness?'

A dark flash went over his face, a silent fury. He was hollow-cheeked
and pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, with her serious,
conscience-harrowing question tortured him on the quick.

'They are not roused to consciousness,' he said. 'Consciousness comes
to them, willy-nilly.'

'But do you think they are better for having it quickened, stimulated?
Isn't it better that they should remain unconscious of the hazel, isn't
it better that they should see as a whole, without all this pulling to
pieces, all this knowledge?'

'Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red
flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?' he asked harshly. His
voice was brutal, scornful, cruel.

Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent
in irritation.

'I don't know,' she replied, balancing mildly. 'I don't know.'

'But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,' he broke out.
She slowly looked at him.

'Is it?' she said.

'To know, that is your all, that is your life--you have only this, this
knowledge,' he cried. 'There is only one tree, there is only one fruit,
in your mouth.'

Again she was some time silent.

'Is there?' she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in
a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: 'What fruit, Rupert?'

'The eternal apple,' he replied in exasperation, hating his own
metaphors.

'Yes,' she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some
moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a
convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice:

'But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better,
richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are?
Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn't they
better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, ANYTHING, rather
than this self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.'

They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat
she resumed, 'Hadn't they better be anything than grow up crippled,
crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings--so thrown back--so
turned back on themselves--incapable--' Hermione clenched her fist like
one in a trance--'of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always
burdened with choice, never carried away.'

Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply,
she resumed her queer rhapsody--'never carried away, out of themselves,
always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves.
Isn't ANYTHING better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with
no mind at all, than this, this NOTHINGNESS--'

'But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and
selfconscious?' he asked irritably.

She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.

'Yes,' she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes
vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague
weariness. It irritated him bitterly. 'It is the mind,' she said, 'and
that is death.' She raised her eyes slowly to him: 'Isn't the mind--'
she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, 'isn't it our death?
Doesn't it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the
young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to
live?'

'Not because they have too much mind, but too little,' he said
brutally.

'Are you SURE?' she cried. 'It seems to me the reverse. They are
overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.'

'Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,' he cried.

But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic
interrogation.

'When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but knowledge?' she
asked pathetically. 'If I know about the flower, don't I lose the
flower and have only the knowledge? Aren't we exchanging the substance
for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of
knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this
knowing mean to me? It means nothing.'

'You are merely making words,' he said; 'knowledge means everything to
you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You don't want to
BE an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a
mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary--and more
decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the
worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion
and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts--you want them hard
enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes
place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won't be
conscious of what ACTUALLY is: you want the lie that will match the
rest of your furniture.'

Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula stood
covered with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to see how they hated
each other.

'It's all that Lady of Shalott business,' he said, in his strong
abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before the unseeing air.
'You've got that mirror, your own fixed will, your immortal
understanding, your own tight conscious world, and there is nothing
beyond it. There, in the mirror, you must have everything. But now you
have come to all your conclusions, you want to go back and be like a
savage, without knowledge. You want a life of pure sensation and
"passion."' pp.31-33

Women in Love - Rather, Men in Love

Gerald Crich and Rupert Berkin have an interesting, slightly heated and
somewhat humorous conversation which rapidly transforms from
individuality versus herd mentality to some curious logical reasoning
on Berkin's part and culminates in the novel's first overt inclination
towards some sort of platonic homosexual love.

Gerald begins:

'Then I'm afraid I can't come up to your expectations here, at any
rate. You think people should just do as they like.'

'I think they always do. But I should like them to like the purely
individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. And
they only like to do the collective thing.'

'And I,' said Gerald grimly, 'shouldn't like to be in a world of people
who acted individually and spontaneously, as you call it. We should
have everybody cutting everybody else's throat in five minutes.'

'That means YOU would like to be cutting everybody's throat,' said
Birkin.

'How does that follow?' asked Gerald crossly.

'No man,' said Birkin, 'cuts another man's throat unless he wants to
cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete
truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee.
And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable
is a man who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.'

'Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,' said Gerald to Birkin. 'As a matter
of fact, none of us wants our throat cut, and most other people would
like to cut it for us--some time or other--'

'It's a nasty view of things, Gerald,' said Birkin, 'and no wonder you
are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.'

'How am I afraid of myself?' said Gerald; 'and I don't think I am
unhappy.'

'You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, and
imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,' Birkin said.

'How do you make that out?' said Gerald.

'From you,' said Birkin.

There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very
near to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk
brought them into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous
intimacy which was either hate or love, or both. They parted with
apparent unconcern, as if their going apart were a trivial occurrence.
And they really kept it to the level of trivial occurrence. Yet the
heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each other,
inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their
relationship a casual free-and-easy friendship, they were not going to
be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them.
They had not the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and
men, and their disbelief prevented any development of their powerful
but suppressed friendliness. - pp.26-27

Women in Love - The Incompleteness of a Singular Being

Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the
social equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet
in Willey Green. She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and
of intellect. She was a KULTURTRAGER, a medium for the culture of
ideas. With all that was highest, whether in society or in thought or
in public action, or even in art, she was at one, she moved among the
foremost, at home with them. No one could put her down, no one could
make mock of her, because she stood among the first, and those that
were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or in
high association of thought and progress and understanding. So, she was
invulnerable. All her life, she had sought to make herself
invulnerable, unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.

And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the
church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all
vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and
perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture,
under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds
and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable,
there was always a secret chink in her armour. She did not know herself
what it was. It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural
sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being
within her.

And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for
ever. She craved for Rupert Birkin. When he was there, she felt
complete, she was sufficient, whole. For the rest of time she was
established on the sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her
vanity and securities, any common maid-servant of positive, robust
temper could fling her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by
the slightest movement of jeering or contempt. And all the while the
pensive, tortured woman piled up her own defences of aesthetic
knowledge, and culture, and world-visions, and disinterestedness. Yet
she could never stop up the terrible gap of insufficiency.

If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection with her, she
would be safe during this fretful voyage of life. He could make her
sound and triumphant, triumphant over the very angels of heaven. If
only he would do it! But she was tortured with fear, with misgiving.
She made herself beautiful, she strove so hard to come to that degree
of beauty and advantage, when he should be convinced. But always there
was a deficiency. pp.11-12

Women in Love, DH Lawrence - Love at First Sight

Her son was of a fair, sun-tanned type, rather above middle height,
well-made, and almost exaggeratedly well-dressed. But about him also
was the strange, guarded look, the unconscious glisten, as if he did
not belong to the same creation as the people about him. Gudrun lighted
on him at once. There was something northern about him that magnetised
her. In his clear northern flesh and his fair hair was a glisten like
sunshine refracted through crystals of ice. And he looked so new,
unbroached, pure as an arctic thing. Perhaps he was thirty years old,
perhaps more. His gleaming beauty, maleness, like a young,
good-humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind her to the significant,
sinister stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger of his unsubdued
temper. 'His totem is the wolf,' she repeated to herself. 'His mother
is an old, unbroken wolf.' And then she experienced a keen paroxyism, a
transport, as if she had made some incredible discovery, known to
nobody else on earth. A strange transport took possession of her, all
her veins were in a paroxysm of violent sensation. 'Good God!' she
exclaimed to herself, 'what is this?' And then, a moment after, she was
saying assuredly, 'I shall know more of that man.' She was tortured
with desire to see him again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him
again, to make sure it was not all a mistake, that she was not deluding
herself, that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation
on his account, this knowledge of him in her essence, this powerful
apprehension of him. 'Am I REALLY singled out for him in some way, is
there really some pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us two?'
she asked herself. And she could not believe it, she remained in a
muse, scarcely conscious of what was going on around. - p.10 (Wordsworth Classics, 1992)

An excellent articulation of the feelings associated with love at first sight.

The Third Man - Fake Mourners and Lovers

I am not a religious man and always feel a little impatient with the fuss that surrounds death... As we drove away I noticed Martins never looked behind - it's nearly always the fake mourners and the fake lovers who take that last look, who wait waiving on platforms, instead of clearing quickly out, not looking back. Is it perhaps that they love themselves so much and want to keep themselves in the sight of others, even of the dead? - p.22 (Penguin Books, 1950)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCU2TdBsa2s

The Third Man - War and Cuckoo Clocks

       Don't be so gloomy...After all,
       it's not that awful. Remember what
       the fellow said...

       - in Italy, for thirty years under
       the Borgias, they had warfare,
       terror, murder, bloodshed, but they
       produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo
       Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In
       Switzerland, they had brotherly
       love. They had five hundred years
       of democracy and peace, and what did
       that produce?...The cuckoo clock.
       So long, Holly.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_third_man.htm 

Click on the pic above to see the speech on YOUTUBE. 

The Third Man - Perspective

Harry Lime meets Martins at the fair ground and they enjoy an enlightening
conversation in a carriage of the ferris wheel as it climbs.                      

                      MARTINS
          Have you ever seen any of your
          victims?

                       HARRY
          Do you know, I don't ever feel
          comfortable on these sort of
          things...Victims?

He opens the door of the carriage.

                       HARRY
          Don't be melodramatic.                 
          Look down there...

LONG SHOT

from Martins' eye line of the fair ground far below and the
people now on it.

                       HARRY (O.S.)
          Would you feel any pity if one of
          those dots stopped moving forever?

                       HARRY
          If I offered you £20,000 for every
          dot that stopped - would you
          really, old man, tell me to keep my
          money? Or would you calculate how
          many dots you could afford to
          spare?...Free of Income Tax, old
          man...

          ...free of Income Tax.

                       HARRY
          It's the only way to save money
          nowadays.

                       MARTINS
          Lot of good your money will do you
          in jail.

...

                        HARRY
          You're just a little mixed up about
          things.
          ...in general. Nobody thinks in
          terms...
          ...of human beings. Governments
          don't, so why should we? They talk
          about the people, and the
          Proletariat... I talk about the
          suckers and the mugs...
          It's the same thing. They have
          their five-year plan, and so have I.

                       MARTINS
          You used to believe in God.

                       HARRY
          I still do believe in God, old
          man... I believe in God and Mercy
          and all that... The dead are
          happier dead. They don't miss much
          here...
          ...poor devils.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_third_man.htm

The Third Man - Graham Greene

I remember studying The Third Man when I was about ten or eleven years old, but aside from this vague recollection, I've held on to very little. Having read a few of Greene's novels including The Quite American (pertinent when I went to Vietnam in August 2007), Brighton Rock, Monsignor Quixote, and perhaps my favourite Our Man in Havana (which I'm sure to re-read and feel obliged to blog), I was drawn to The Third Man because it was not only a short quick read but it had also become quite an important cultural artistic piece in my mind because it was also a film (1949), with Orson Welles as the enigmatic Harry Lime, set in Vienna with some stunningly hypnotic cinematography; the clatter of shoes on the rain soaked cobbled streets, the tumbling scuffle of rubble, the clunking of latches and the sliding wooden door of the ferris wheel carriage, the black and white images, - there just seems to be something rustic and deeply satisfying about this pseudo-murder-mystery film beyond just the mechanical workings of plot and narrative. And because Greene produced the screenplay, I can safely say I much preferred the film!

For anyone who's seen the film and wants to revisit one of the truelly wonderful moments in cincematic history, or anyone who doesn't intend to watch the film but is happy to cut to the chase with one of the truelly wonderful moments in cinematic history, HAVE A LOOK on YOUTUBE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-MXlqC8YeE&feature=related