Women in Love - Torn like Silk

'Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a woman? She's so beautiful, so perfect, you find her SO GOOD, it tears you like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot—ha, that perfection, when you blast yourself, you blast yourself! And then—' he stopped on the snow and suddenly opened his clenched hands—'it's nothing—your brain might have gone charred as rags—and—' he looked round into the air with a queer histrionic movement 'it's blasting—you understand what I mean—it is a great experience, something final—and then—you're shrivelled as if struck by electricity.' He walked on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a man in extremity bragging truthfully.-p.385

Women in Love - Marriage; Achieving Something Beyond Love

Read first, Something Beyond Love.

He sat looking at her. She could feel his darkened steady eyes looking at her all the time. It made her a little bit frightened. She pushed her hair off her forehead nervously.

'Do I look ugly?' she said.

And she blew her nose again.

A small smile came round his eyes.

'No,' he said, 'fortunately.'

And he went across to her, and gathered her like a belonging in his arms. She was so tenderly beautiful, he could not bear to see her, he could only bear to hide her against himself. Now; washed all clean by her tears, she was new and frail like a flower just unfolded, a flower so new, so tender, so made perfect by inner light, that he could not bear to look at her, he must hide her against himself, cover his eyes against her. She had the perfect candour of creation, something translucent and simple, like a radiant, shining flower that moment unfolded in primal blessedness. She was so new, so wonder-clear, so undimmed. And he was so old, so steeped in heavy memories. Her soul was new, undefined and glimmering with the unseen. And his soul was dark and gloomy, it had only one grain of living hope, like a grain of mustard seed. But this one living grain in him matched the perfect youth in her.

'I love you,' he whispered as he kissed her, and trembled with pure hope, like a man who is born again to a wonderful, lively hope far exceeding the bounds of death.

She could not know how much it meant to him, how much he meant by the few words. Almost childish, she wanted proof, and statement, even over-statement, for everything seemed still uncertain, unfixed to her.

But the passion of gratitude with which he received her into his soul, the extreme, unthinkable gladness of knowing himself living and fit to unite with her, he, who was so nearly dead, who was so near to being gone with the rest of his race down the slope of mechanical death, could never be understood by her. He worshipped her as age worships youth, he gloried in her, because, in his one grain of faith, he was young as she, he was her proper mate. This marriage with her was his resurrection and his life.

All this she could not know. She wanted to be made much of, to be adored. There were infinite distances of silence between them. How could he tell her of the immanence of her beauty, that was not form, or weight, or colour, but something like a strange, golden light! How could he know himself what her beauty lay in, for him. He said 'Your nose is beautiful, your chin is adorable.' But it sounded like lies, and she was disappointed, hurt. Even when he said, whispering with truth, 'I love you, I love you,' it was not the real truth. It was something beyond love, such a gladness of having surpassed oneself, of having transcended the old existence. How could he say "I" when he was something new and unknown, not himself at all? This I, this old formula of the age, was a dead letter.

In the new, superfine bliss, a peace superseding knowledge, there was no I and you, there was only the third, unrealised wonder, the wonder of existing not as oneself, but in a consummation of my being and of her being in a new one, a new, paradisal unit regained from the duality. Nor can I say 'I love you,' when I have ceased to be, and you have ceased to be: we are both caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one. Speech travels between the separate parts. But in the perfect One there is perfect silence of bliss. They were married by law on the next day, and she did as he bade her, she wrote to her father and mother. -p.322-33

Ursula demonstrates her understanding in a later conversation with her sister Gudrun:

'And what will happen when you find yourself in space?' she cried in derision. 'After all, the great ideas of the world are the same there. You above everybody can't get away from the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing, in space as well as on earth.'

'No,' said Ursula, 'it isn't. Love is too human and little. I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love. It isn't so merely HUMAN.'

Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady, balancing eyes. She admired and despised her sister so much, both! Then, suddenly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglily:

'Well, I've got no further than love, yet.'

Over Ursula's mind flashed the thought: 'Because you never HAVE loved, you can't get beyond it.'

Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck. -p.383

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 - 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.