D. H. Lawrence, Ship of Death

[LLItaly]

Hello Virgil and Janine thank you for the warm welcome. I'll try to keep up when I can. Yes, Janine, I found the forum by running a search on google and it brought up a snippet of my short piece published by Poets& Writers On line- but clicking back through the posts I couldn't find it again. Will check later more thoroughly for the post.

Lawrence's letter to KM was written in Dec. 1915 ( I have also published a novel about KM called Katherine's Wish, but dealing with the last phase of her life).

In his letter to her he writes " Do not be sad. It is one life which is passing away from us, one I is dying but there is another coming into being, which is the happy, creative you. I knew you would have to die with your brother, you also, go down into death and be extinguished. But for us there is a rising from the grave, there is a resurrection and a clean life to begin from the start, new, happy."

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Janine, I am very keen to know what this Minoan experience book is you mentioned in your post. Please tell me more ( I have just returned from a yearly visit to Crete)
I'd be honored Janine if you'd read my book. It is available on Amazon.com and also from Barnes and Nobles. It's also in some libraries, too.
There's a little about the book
available on my site www.theetruscan.com with a link to a youtube
trailer which is really a short documentary with some good shots of etruscan places

At the moment I am working on an essay about KM and Lawrence and since I am a full time teacher, have so very little time to do everything. But I look forward to getting to know you all, and diving a bit deeper into your forum.

[Virgil]

Thank you LL. I'll go see if I have that letter in my collection.

[Virgil]

Oh I do have the letter in my The Selected Letters of D.H. Lawrence (ed. James T. Boulton). And what a marevelous letter. It does lend insight into Lawrence's ideas. Let me quote a couple of passages.

I want so much that we should create a life in common, a new spirit, a spirit of unanimity between a few of us who are desirous in spirit, that we should add our lives together, to make one tree, each of us free and producing in his separate fashion, but all of us together forming one Spring, a unanimous blossoming. It needs that we be in one spirit, that is all. What we are personally is of second importance.

First, what a great sentence that first sentence is there. Lawrence was so gifted at writing such free flowing sentences. Second, so many of his ideas are packed in there. He believed in a utopia of people living naturally as in a pre-edenic state. And that pre-edenic state was a loss of will and ego (the self) and consciouness - "what we are personally is of second importance." What is of primary importance is the unconcious, rooted in connection with the natural spirit that is some form of deity. Notice also his metaphor is with vegetation and flowering. Flowers represent that perfect state of nature - no will or consciousness, just pure blooming in nature.

And later in the letter he says the following:

Let us all live together and create a new world. If it is too difficult in England, because here is all destruction and dying and corruption, let us away to Florida: soon. But let us go together, and keep together, several of us, as being of one spirit. Only let there be no personal obligation, no personal idea. Let it be a union in the unconsciousness, not in the consciousness.

The italicized words are italicized in the text, so I imagine Lawrence himself must have underlined them. Lawrence was serious around this time 1915-ish of gathering his friends and establishing some sort of commune in Florida. Remember that WWI was going on and he came to conclude that the war was a manifestation of corrupt society, a society gone wrong, and part of the root of that problem was because society had become overly conscious, overly mental, lost that connection to primal nature that enriched the unconscious and made us connected to that transcendental spirit. You can see he believed that such a pre-edenic state was possible, at least at this time in his life. He really wanted this commune and did go at length to set it up. His friends did not go along with it. Ultimately later he felt that humans could not let go of that ego, that self. Or at least he felt ambivilent that it could occur. I'm not sure myself if he ever lost that idealism. I would love to have a group read of Lady Chatterly's Lover, his last major work.

By the way LL, Lawrence's travels can be seen as a search for that utopian place, that culture that revealed the way to live in such an edenic state. Sardinia, Italy, Austrailia, New Mexico, Mexico, and finally back to Italy with the etruscans. Perhaps this is the angle you need to teach that class. Establish the utopian ideas of Lawrence and then take him through his various journeys.

[Janine]

Excellent post, Virgil! I am wishing I had more time to write something too. I am sure I also have that letter and will look it up tonight later on. I want the time to fully comprehend what he communicates in these ideas to KM. Virgil, I posted the link to an article about The Minoan Distance in the other L thread...Etruscan...I think you will find it very interesting. There are a few interesting photos, as well. The book is available on Amazon and on Half.com but it's out of print.

[Virgil]

Excellent post, Virgil! I am wishing I had more time to write something too. I am sure I also have that letter and will look it up tonight later on. I want the time to fully comprehend what he communicates in these ideas to KM. Virgil, I posted the link to an article about The Minoan Distance in the other L thread...Etruscan...I think you will find it very interesting. There are a few interesting photos, as well. The book is available on Amazon and on Half.com but it's out of print.

I found it and commented.

[Janine]

I found it and commented.

Where did you comment?

[Virgil]

Where did you comment?

Right after your post with the link, in that other thread.

[Janine]

Right after your post with the link, in that other thread.

True, but then I have commented on your comment since...go and see what I said....

[LLItaly]

Thank you for replying to my post. Yes, it is a very moving letter. Actually, as you probably know, Lawrence convinced Katherine & Murry to try an experiment in "communal living" -- and took them to Cornwall, where he installed Katherine in a very bleak tower with a view of a boulder-strewn beach. It wasn't the best thing for her health - and she very ironically commented on what it is was like to live near the volcanic Lawrences in her diary. There's a great scene in which she describes Lawrence chasing Frieda with a frying pan -roaring "I'll kill you" and then shortly afterwards, Frieda chasing Lawrence - it ended with a knock out fight, in which F beat L even more thoroughly than he had ever beaten her, and at the end of the day, he was trimming her hat by the fire. That sort of emotional explosiveness was too much for KM and she escaped after a month, but later in her diary she also confessed that she understood it - and that she was exactly like L. in that regard. I think L's friends loved to be inspired by his ideas -- by his genius, by his enormous gifts -- but at the same time, I don't think any of them would have wanted to really live in a commune very long with him.

Thank you for telling me about the Minoan Distance I looked it up and will try to get hold of it. Yes, that was the tack I usually took when teaching L - the savage journey into self and the search for wholeness. We don't have time in the class to read other works by Lawrence. They have to do other stuff, and most importantly, they have to write literary travel pieces about their explorations of italy. Even though they are staying in the heart of Etruria -- and have an opportunity to see the painted tombs of Tarquinia, and also to explore rustic tombs outlying the Viterbo area which are still more or less in the condition they were when L. was here ( there's no art work left in them. But they are fascinating tombs hollowed out of rock, out in the middle of the countryside, covered in vines and weeds - not enclosed in any fences, so you can go at any time, even camp out if you like in some of them, and sometimes my more adventurous students do that) So, even with all that, they just don't get what L is driving at in Etruscan Places. It has no resonance for them.

On that note, with regards to EP - I really do feel that Lady Chatterley's Lover was deeply influenced by Lawrence's own feelings, musings, and beliefs concerning the Etruscans -- by his ideas of cosmic sex which he read into some of their art and his interpretations of their religion and of how their society was organized

[Virgil]

Thank you for replying to my post. Yes, it is a very moving letter. Actually, as you probably know, Lawrence convinced Katherine & Murry to try an experiment in "communal living" -- and took them to Cornwall, where he installed Katherine in a very bleak tower with a view of a boulder-strewn beach. It wasn't the best thing for her health - and she very ironically commented on what it is was like to live near the volcanic Lawrences in her diary. There's a great scene in which she describes Lawrence chasing Frieda with a frying pan -roaring "I'll kill you" and then shortly afterwards, Frieda chasing Lawrence - it ended with a knock out fight, in which F beat L even more thoroughly than he had ever beaten her, and at the end of the day, he was trimming her hat by the fire. That sort of emotional explosiveness was too much for KM and she escaped after a month, but later in her diary she also confessed that she understood it - and that she was exactly like L. in that regard. I think L's friends loved to be inspired by his ideas -- by his genius, by his enormous gifts -- but at the same time, I don't think any of them would have wanted to really live in a commune very long with him.

Oh yes, I had forgotten they had tried living together in Cornwall. And it was a disaster. Like all utopias, they don't work. Whoo, yes Lawrence and Frieda did get into physical altercations, and Frieda was stronger than him.

[Janine]

You should both read the book D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage by Brenda Maddox (Paperback - Jun 17, 1996). It's an interesting book, which explores Lawrence's marriage to the strong willed Frieda. And yes, I agree with you, Virgil, I think she was stronger than he was, physically speaking. She didn't lose too often!