Enquiry.

[MANICHAEAN]

How much truth is there in the phrase; "You have never worked for hunger, or you would know what God governs us."

[Pompey Bum]

If Lawrence/Loerke had used a small-case g for God he would have had a pagan truth (in an unromanticized sense).

[MANICHAEAN]

Cannot get much past you Pompey.

It was a small "g" from Lawrence, "Women in Love." It upset my Catholic sensibilities. Came across the sentence yesterday when trawling through a memory stick full of bits and pieces.

Do you detect much of basic pagan instincts in his work?

M.

[Pompey Bum]

I wouldn't call it a pagan instinct, and it's certainly not paganism in the current romanticized (and silly) eco-friendly sense. Lawrence saw religion as something human beings had outgrown. He was interested in asking what was going to come next. In my view, much of what he came up with (sexual love, the phallus, etc.) ended up as a kind of failed 20th century paganism. Loerke's opinions are even worse, since he is enamored of the coming workers' paradise (not that this was Lawrence's own view); and we both know how that ended up--even if some of the kiddies don't.