D.H. Lawrence - Apocalypse (1932)

 

Lawrence wrote Apocalypse, his highly personal interpretation of the Book of Revelation, on his death bed. It was his last great piece of writing and he made every word count, more or less reducing what he'd been getting at over previous decades to its clearest, most concentrated essence. You could call it religion or philosophy, although both are arguably misleading in this case. This is how Lawrence saw the world, or more precisely what he thought was meant by the term.

As an analysis of Revelation, Apocalypse somewhat reveals what might be deemed the contradiction at the heart of Lawrence's view of the world, specifically his shunning the methodical, scientific approach in favour of the intuitive. This might seem to foreshadow today's internet pundits with their apparent belief that facts may often complicate or unduly bias an issue. Lawrence, however, insists on there being two essentially incompatible ways of seeing, and he favoured the materialist approach, giving precedence to that which is seen, felt, or experienced over abstract rationalisation after the fact. Therefore, as with Etruscan Places in which he writes about Italian civilisation before the Romans through aesthetic consideration of their art and architecture, Apocalypse deals in what might be deemed poetic truth rather than the purely historical. While this might seem akin to Erich von Däniken finding flying saucers in Ezekiel's wheels - a proposal facilitated by conveniently ignoring existing interpretations of the symbolism - Lawrence's intuitive method is itself a refusal to impose established patterns or methods of understanding upon the material - in other words an attempt to unravel Revelation entirely on its own terms. This approach is validated, I would argue, by its refusal to view the texts as the poorly formulated mumbling of primitives - actually the opposite of Erich's methodology, such as it is - and is additionally validated by the clarity and conviction of his testimony. For what it may be worth, his testimony here also reminds me a little of A.E. van Vogt, who wrote about rockets and mutants but took a similarly intuitive approach.

As for what Lawrence actually says, the whole point of the book is that the discourse loses definition and even meaning when summarised or broken down into symbols, but the main theme is that pre-Christian religion was not religion as we understand it today, and because of this we have lost our way as a people. He sets out a convincing and coherent argument for this view as well, but - as with Point Counterpoint - you really need to read the thing to appreciate it.

All of this being said, Apocalypse remains very much a personal view - although Lawrence resisted the idea that any of his pronouncements should ever be taken as the final word on anything - so additionally revealing his blind spots; and it seems particularly sad given that he spent so much time in Mexico, engaging with adherents to a pre-Christian belief system very much in line with much of what is described in Apocalypse.

Even to the early scientists or philosophers, 'the cold', 'the moist', 'the hot', 'the dry' were things in themselves, realities, gods, theoi. And they did things.

Yet, little if anything of this makes it into The Plumed Serpent with its fallen Indians performing a heavily befeathered summary of an actual living religion filtered through the grimmer aspects of Lawrence's Methodist upbringing. It was staring him in the face and somehow he missed it.

Nevertheless, for all the flaws one might find in Apocalypse, the strength of the main argument eclipses them to the point of irrelevance, and this was one hell of a swan song.

Aldous Huxley - Point Counterpoint (1928)

 

This is the fairly chewy looking Aldous Huxley novel to which I referred a couple of weeks ago. I took another shot at it, and while I'd say chewy remains as good a description as ever, I got through it and even enjoyed it for the most part. Again we have a variation on previous Huxley novels such as Crome Yellow and Antic Hay amounting to a non-linear essay on the state of the world communicated through the dialogue of a large and thus occasionally confusing cast. However, this one is distinguished by at least a few of those characters being based on persons either of Huxley's acquaintance or otherwise of cultural significance around the turn of the century - notably D.H. Lawrence, Augustus John, Baudelaire, and John Hargrave, advocate of the Social Credit movement which, although Utopian and authoritarian was vocally opposed to Fascism and later fought the BUF in the streets - which I mention mainly because Huxley's Everard Webley is often wrongly identified as having been based on Oswald Mosely.

Huxley appears in Point Counterpoint as Philip Quarle, himself a writer, and so the book approaches the fourth wall without quite breaking through in the form of notes and letters written by Philip Quarle referring to his own novel in progress:

The musicalisation of fiction. Not in the symbolist way, by subordinating sense to sound (Pleuvent les bleus baisers des astres taciturnes. Mere glossolalia) But on a large scale, in the construction. Meditate on Beethoven.  The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions. (Majesty alternating with a joke, for example, in the first movement of the B flat major Quartet. Comedy suddenly hinting at prodigious and tragic solemnities in the scherzo of the C sharp minor Quartet.) More interesting still, the modulations, not merely from one key to another, but from mood to mood. A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. In sets of variations the process is carried a step further. Those incredible Diabelli variations, for example. The whole range of thought and feeling, yet all in organic relation to a ridiculous little waltz tune. Get this into a novel. How? The abrupt transitions are easy enough. All you need is a sufficiency of characters and parallel, contrapuntal plots. While Jones is murdering a wife, Smith is wheeling the perambulator in the park. You alternate the themes. More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult. A novelist modulates by reduplicating situations and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways—dissimilars solving the same problem. Or, vice versa, similar people confronted with dissimilar problems.

Of course, on the surface of it this means we have four-hundred pages of people talking about stuff, with the stuff being the point of the novel and that which is communicated with the most vigour. It could have gone tits up but Huxley was always exceptionally good at this sort of thing, delivering complex arguments and observations, even those built up on layers of nuance with pinpoint, near scientific accuracy - as distinct from Lawrence's more impressionist, intuitive approach to narratives of equivalent purpose.

Point Counterpoint is about the modern world, as it was in 1928, and about where we were going wrong, and where we continue to go wrong. It's about notions of progress in the wake of Darwin and the industrial revolution, and the infusion of such ideas into the realms of art, literature, politics, religion, and society; and, as usual, the Hux was right about fucking everything, here demonstrated through the mouthpiece of his impressively faithful D.H. Lawrence stand-in

'Our truth, the relevant human truth, is something you discover by living—living completely, with the whole man. The results of your amusements, Philip, all these famous theories about the cosmos and their practical applications—they've got nothing whatever to do with the only truth that matters. And the non-human truth isn't merely irrelevant; it's dangerous. It distracts people's attention from the important human truth. It makes them falsify their experience in order that lived reality may fit in with abstract theory.'

If it's chewy - which it is - then Point Counterpoint is justifiably chewy, its subject being that old chestnut everything ever, and it isn't difficult to see why some regard it as Huxley's greatest. I feel I should probably go into greater detail but it would be easier if you just read the thing.

D.H. Lawrence - Selected Letters (1950)

 

Well, it turns out that he did write his autobiography after all, albeit without intending to. Lawrence, it seems, was the self-involved trans-activist let loose on TikTok of his day in terms of correspondence, firing off letters to anyone and everyone, left, right and center, and usually in such entertaining spirit that even those who thought he was a bit of a dick kept his missives for posterity. If it's any indication of the sheer word count we're talking here, I also have the second of the two volume set of collected letters, covering the years 1921 to 1930, a period during which the lad apparently wasn't making so much use of the postal system as had once been the case. It's six-hundred pages of small type, which is why I went for this one on this occasion, spanning as it does Lawrence's entire life in just under two-hundred pages; and it's rivetting. Just about any accusation you could pitch against the man and his work is either refuted or otherwise undermined in this selection of correspondence, which is lively, funny, insightful, touching, and explains why he could be such an awkward bugger when the mood took him. If you feel you have yet to truly get to grips with the man and his work, it's all here, and is as such a testament to the probability of his legitimately deserving the accolade of genius.

D.H. Lawrence - This Mortal Coil (1971)

 

My to be read pile has been dominated by D.H. Lawrence for much of the past year because I picked up a whole bunch of his during my first flourish of enthusiasm - back in the nineties, would you believe - then never got around to reading them, mainly because there were so many and very few with spaceships on the cover. Consequently, now that I've made some headway, excepting one fairly chewy looking Aldous Huxley novel, my to be read pile is all D.H. Lawrence; and I'm now onto those published posthumously.

This Mortal Coil is short stories, only one of which I recall having read before, and in a few cases collected for the first time for all I know. Lawrence never wrote a formal autobiography, possibly because his writing was already strongly autobiographical, which This Mortal Coil illustrates with short stories quite clearly drawn from his life reproduced in chronological sequence - from his youth in Nottingham, to Europe, and finally to his deathbed. Lawrence seems to have been a little embarrassed by a couple of these examples (hence my doubts about their having been published more than once while he was alive) presumably due to their juvenile quality - conversely meaning the earlier efforts are fairly breezy, predating the heavy fog of emotional symbolism in which he enveloped the later works. Of these earlier efforts, Adolf is particularly delightful as an account of his pet rabbit - so named before even the first world war should anyone be wondering. Indeed, the stories I enjoyed most were those recording details in the domestic lives of mining families around the turn of the century, these being short but substantial and benefiting from the kind of focus which suggests, at least to me, a sort of written analogy to the paintings of Walter Sickert, or other Post-Impressionists as Lawrence's fixation with flowering plants begins to make its presence felt.

'Your foggy weather of symbolism, as usual,' he said.

'The fog is not of symbols,' she replied, in her metallic voice of displeasure. 'It may be symbols are candles in a fog.'

'I prefer my fog without candles. I'm the fog, eh? Then I'll blow out your candle, and you'll see me better. Your candles of speech, symbols and so forth, only lead you more wrong. I'm going to wander blind, and go by instinct, like a moth that flies and settles on the wooden box his mate is shut up in.'

'Isn't it an ignis fatuus you are flying after, at that rate?' she said.

I've quoted this passage because I enjoy how it describes what Dave was trying to do with both his writing and his life, at least in the later years, while simultaneously presenting a criticism of the same; and which additionally accounts for why the last three or four in the collection are perhaps a little too chewy for their own good, at least in comparison with Adolf, Rex, The Miner at Home and others. Nevertheless, in sheer stylistic scope this may be the broadest collection of Lawrence's short stories that I've read, and accordingly one of the most satisfying.