Aphrodite and universal corruption...

APHRODITE AND UNIVERSAL CORRUPTION: A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIGNETTE TO THE NOVEL OF D.H.LAWRENCE “WOMEN IN LOVE”

Budimir Rogovoy, Ph.D. (Russia)

Birkin, a hero of the novel “Women in Love”, says:
“We always consider  the silver river of life rolling on and quickening all the world to a brightness, on and on to heaven, flowing into a bright eternal sea, a heaven of angels thronging. But the other is our real reality that dark river of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls- the black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this – our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers of sensuous perfection, all our reality, nowadays.” (D.H.Lawrence – “Women in Love”,Ware, Herfordshire, Great Britain:Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1999,ch.14, p.148).
These words do, without doubt, express the opinions of D.H.Lawrence himself. D.H.Lawrence is widely and rightly known as a prophet of sensuous enjoyment but here is the other, the polar side of his brilliant dialectics of love and life: this enjoyment is at present corrupt and may lead to dissolution.
The panoramic view of “Women in Love” shows, in its plot as well as in many refined intellectual dialogues, various kinds of corruption of sexual and other forms of life.
Birkin thinks on traditional marriage:
“The old way of love seemed a dreadful bondage, a sort of conscription.” But
“…he hated promiscuity even worse than marriage…” (ibidem, ch.16, p.172).
The causes of such attitudes of Birkin/ D.H.Lawrence are clearly shown in the novel.
Against marriage:
The partners may be “clutching”, may have “a lust of possession, a greed of self-importance in love”, they may want “to have, to own, to control, to be dominant” (ibidem, p.172). And it holds true for women as well as for men.
The subordinated as well as the dominant partner loses thereby freedom, which seems to be a primary value for D.H.Lawrence. “The natural flowering of life”, an integral part of which is “the flux of sex”, is corrupted as the result.
Against promiscuity:
The “spirit of instrumentality” permeating the corrupted marriages becomes open and unhindered in promiscuous sexual relations. And it makes freedom of individuals presumed to express in promiscuity false and corrupt.
Birkin says on the psychic transcendence in love:
“…we will both cast off everything, cast ourselves even, and cease to be, so that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us” (ibidem, ch.13, p.125).
V.also below, p.3 on spiritual unity in marriage.
Such a dialectical transcendence is difficult to achieve in marriage , and there is no hope to reach it in promiscuity.
We shall pass now from our cursory discussion of the contradictions of sexual life as shown in the novel to the social background of these contradictions.
We considered shortly the polar contradictions of marriage and promiscuity (v. also below,p.3). Speaking of universal corruption we may say about the contrast of relatedness and freedom. Both are fundamental values for D.H.Lawrence.
Humanity has lost adequate relatedness to nature and as the result there are now  depletion of energy and water, unfavorable climactic changes and, generally, growth of population greatly surpassing the availability of natural resources.
Humanity has lost adequate relatedness to itself, and the excess will to power and extreme aggressiveness were major contributive factors for the development of the global human crisis.
By the way, human aggressiveness is vividly depicted in many scenes and events of the novel, and also shows itself in the intense pertinacity of the heroes in their dialogues.
But such pertinacity is also an integral part of the striving to self-knowledge and self-realization the latter demanding much sublimated aggression. That is a positive side of aggression, which is also shown in the novel quite convincingly.
Almost a century ago D.H.Lawrence saw clearly the imminence of the present-day global human crisis and its connection with the corruption of the individual psyche.
The onset of the global crisis marked off by the World War I was deeply felt by D.H.Lawrence and reflected in the novel “Women in Love” written in 1916, although no direct references to the War may be found in it.
Birkin says:
“Man never gets beyond the caterpillar stage.” “Man is a mistake, he must go”. (ibidem,ch.11,p.109).
And he makes a prediction of the dissolution of humanity.
“Ursula: The beginning comes out of the end.
Birkin: After us, not out of us.” (ibidem, ch.14,p.148).
It seems pertinent to note first that our frequent citations of Birkin do not mean that he is the only mouthpiece of the ideas of the novel but he expresses these ideas in the laconic form most suitable for short citations, and secondly that  these and other ideas expressed in the novel by its heroes were not absolutes for the author and are often counterbalanced by the opposite ideas and events in the plot; cf., e.g.,ch.28.
The corruption of sexual life is an integral part of the general psychic corruption. The causes of it are clearly indicated by Hermione:
“Isn`t the mind,- she said,-…isn`t it our death? Doesn`t it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instinct?”
Birkin answers:
“Not because they have too much mind, but too little… Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts”, he cried.” (ibidem, ch.3,p.33).
In his essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne D.H.Lawrence says about the contradiction of “mind-consciousness”and “blood-consciousness”:
“We are all of us conscious in both ways. And the two ways are antagonistic in us. They will always remain so. That is our cross.”
It was only in the 70th years of the 20th century that the Western science proved irrefutably the existence of  two consciousnesses in man: the left-hemispheric (LH) called “mind-consciousness” by D.H.Lawrence and the right-hemispheric (RH) one called “blood-consciousness” by him. But the paramount importance  of the bilaterality of our mind for psychic health and pathology has not, as we believe it, been fully grasped by science as yet.
D.H.Lawrence was indeed a pioneer in this field, and he indicated clearly that  the conflict of the two consciousnesses may lead to a general crisis of humanity.
The LH consciousness was a relatively new development, on the historical scale, and it gave such possibilities of logical abstraction and verbalization that in fact created our civilization.
But it gave also possibilities of illusions and psychic pathology.
J.Wallace wrote in his Introduction to “Women in Love” that the death of Gerald seems to be “a symbolic lapsing out… suggesting the extinction of human life in the icy wastes of abstraction and idealism to which the species had committed itself”. (ibidem, p.XL).
Are there any ways of rescue from the tragic contradiction of the two consciousnesses?
One, and a very important, way is indicated in the words of Birkin above (ibidem,ch.3, p.33): change the false concepts for new, correct ones, with the streamlining of LH-control. And all the artistic structure of the novel with a great number of intellectual discussions interspersing the plot corroborates that it was also an opinion of D.H.Lawrence himself.
Another way of much importance can be crystallized  from the following passage:
“You want to have things in your power. And why? Because you haven`t any real body, any dark sensual body of life, you have no sensuality.” (ibidem, ch.3,p.34).
Sensuality should be understood here no doubt in the broad Freudian sense of “libido” as gratification in the body including sexuality  but reaching far beyond it.
And here is looming a possibility of regression with the streamlining of  RH-control. Cf. , e.g.:
“Birkin: I`m sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual”(ibidem,ch.7, p.60).
Again J.Wallace:
“”Women in Love” enacts a subtle dialectic, constantly reminding us that we are animals, yet showing how it is our “nature” as animals to reinvent the natural in culture and language” (ibidem, p.XIII)
This is in close agreement with the postulated principles of the philosophical anthropologist A.Gehlen, who says that creation of culturally dependent artificial “leading structures” over purely biological ones is a real biological necessity for man: “there is no human community known to us where such structures should be absent”..         
The task of Homo “self-styled Sapiens” (this is a citation from A.Huxley) if he really wants to become “Reasonable Man” should be therefore not to get rid of these structures but to re-consider and re-create them in such directions which would be most suitable for the well-being and development of humanity.
The attempts of conservatives to preserve and revive the outdated patterns of  behavior as well as the attempts of nihilists to get rid of any “leading structures” altogether would be futile at best or, in case of their success, would contribute to an entire dissolution of humanity, which constitutes now a really serious threat.
And, returning to our citations from the novel
“Birkin: 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.” (ibidem, ch.11, p.107).
No doubt all the really positive achievements of our culture should be preserved incl. the spiritual unity as “unity in freedom” intended although not always achieved by the Sacrament of Matrimony:
“Birkin: What I want… is an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings”. (ibidem, ch.13, p.126).
But, again Birkin:
“The hot, narrow intimacy between man and wife was abhorrent.”(ibidem, ch.16, p.172).
“Hot” here definitely has the meanings “fiery”, “eager”, “intense”, “violent”, “impetuous”.
.  Intimacy should not be as hot as it is often a case in our culture.
The contradictions of uninhibited lust indicated with much, and often excess , emphasis by the early Christians really exist.
In sexual intimacy one is often “satisfied and shattered, fulfilled and destroyed”. (ibidem, ch.14, p.162).
In search for corrections in this sphere one can address to the Indian Tantra, the Chinese Daoism and the newly developed erotic massage (this roll is not exhaustive).
These practices combining RH- and LH-control may  serve as some  paradigms for general training in correct behaviors.
About the narrowness of marriage.
The novel ends with the following dialogue of Ursula and Birkin:
“Ursula: You can`t have two kinds of love. Why should you?
Birkin: It seems as if I can`t, he said. “Yet I wanted it.
Ursula: You can`t have it, because it`s false, impossible,” she said.
Birkin: I don`t believe that”, he answered.” (ibidem, ch.32)..
The question of compatibility of two or several loves is wider than merely combining heterosexuality and homosexuality. It includes also all the spectrum of loves to our neighbors in that broad sense of the term “neighbor” as was given to it by Christianity; cf.(ibidem, ch.25, p.307).
D.H.Lawrence showed convincingly that the corruption of modern sexual relations is closely connected with the general crisis of our civilization.
But could any sexually oriented measures be helpful for the overcoming this crisis?
D.H.Lawrence believed that the key problem is the corruption of personal life:
“Humanity is less, far less than the individual” (ibidem, ch.11, p.107).
It should not be inferred that in D.H.Lawrence`s work there is an” absence of concern for community” (J.C.Oates). All the structure of the novel and especially its dialogues focusing upon the most burning problems of humanity run counter to such a conclusion.
Cf. also the thoughts of Ursula on Birkin:
“She saw that all the while, in spite of himself, he will have to be trying to save the world” (ibidem,ch.11,p.109).
Freedom and happiness of individuals are of fundamental importance for the fate of humanity. “One free, cheerful activity stimulates another”,- says D.H.Lawrence in “Pansies”.
Birkin thinks:
“…is it  only the race, the genus, the species, that has a universal reference?..Has everything (the italics of D.H.Lawrence) that happens a universal significance?” (ibidem, ch.2, p.20). In the light of the new holographic theory of the structure of reality (which theory is, in our opinion, highly illuminating and offers considerable promise) it should be imperative to answer in the negative to the first and in the affirmative to the second question.
Significant changes of sexual behaviors seem to be an integral part of  the needed changes of our personalities.
Finally we should like to correlate in short with the views of D.H.Lawrence on sexuality somewhat similar, although more optimistic views of the great Russian poet of the 20th century Boris Pasternak.
Here is an excerpt from his poem published in  the collection “My Sister Life” (1922):
“Where Comfort is lying, incensing and smirking,
Where people are fussing and crawling like drones,
He (the Poet) will raise a Woman , among her sister-women,
From the ground, like a maenad on an amphora, and will use her.
And he will pour the thawing of the Andes into his kiss…”
(The excerpt is given in our prosaic translation).
We finish our short essay with one more citation from “Women in Love”:
“…persist and persist for ever, till one were satisfied in life”. (ibidem,  ch.16, p.171).
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