d.h.lawrence "the dance"

in D.H. Lawrence's Twilight in Italy, the author takes the reader to an Italian peasant dance. It is, for the two English ladies in the audience, a simply orgasmic experience. Yet, aside from the obvious allegorical qualities of the passage (the dance as love-act), Lawrence could also be using the device of the dance to construct something about the savage masculinity/sexuality of the Italian man.

In the following passages, Lawrence seems to be constructing conflicting messages about the sexuality of the other (southern Italian).


There were only two English women: so men danced with men, as the Italians love to do. The love even better to dance with men, with a dear blood-friend, than with women

"It's better like this, two men?" Giovanni says to me, his blue eyes hot, his face curiously tender.

and, later...

"Yes-Yes--you've only to let them take you."

Then the glasses are put down, the guitars give their strange, vibrant almost painful summons, and the dance begins again.

It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and changing as the music changed. But it had a kind of leisurely dignity, a trailing kind of polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never violent in its passion, always becoming more intense. The women's faces changed to a kind of transported wonder, they were in the very rhythm of delight. From the soft bricks of the floor red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their cloaks, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and implicate another strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze that was subtly rushing upon them, through them; the men worked their feet their thighs swifter, more vividly, the music came to an almost int! olerable climax, there was a moment when the dance passed into a possession, the men caught up the women and swung them from the earth, leapt with them for a second, and then the next phase of the dance slower again, more subtly interwoven, taking perfect, oh, exquisite delight in every interrelated movement, a rhythm within a rhythm, a subtle approaching and drawing nearer to a climax, nearer till, oh, there was the surpassing lift and swing of the women, when the woman's body seemed like a boat lifted over the powerful, exquisite wave of the man's body, perfect for a moment, and then once more the slow, intense, nearer movement if the dance began, always nearer, nearer, always to a more perfect climax.
In the main portion of the passage above, Lawrence writes a long, run-on sentence, joining his descriptions of the dance, fragmented, with commas and semi-colons. How does his writing mimic the rhythm of the dance, and maybe of the sex-act itself? Is his purpose to make his description more vivid?

____The women's faces changed to a kind of transported wonder, they were in the very rhythm of delight. From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their cloaks, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicate another strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze that was subtly rushing upon them, through them; the men worked their feet, their thighs swifter, more vividly, the music came to an almost intolerable climax, there was a moment when the dance passed into a possession, the men caught up the women and swung them from the earth, leapt with them for a second, and then the next phase of the dance had begun.

why he limits himself to pure observation here, when elsewhere he lapses into abstractions on the greater truths such scenes ultimately take on. Is he perhaps suggesting that there is something mystical, unknowable, about this dance? Something else? There seems to be a strong undercurrent of class-tension in this essay; is it possible that Lawrence, by giving us such an ecstatic, unblinking description of the dance, means to argue that anyone, regardless of class status, can be swept up in these emotions -- love, passion, and sex?

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Originally Posted by connie

In the main portion of the passage above, Lawrence writes a long, run-on sentence, joining his descriptions of the dance, fragmented, with commas and semi-colons. How does his writing mimic the rhythm of the dance, and maybe of the sex-act itself? Is his purpose to make his description more vivid?

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Not only vivid, but tactile, in the sense that you feel you're almost dancing (or having sex) youself. Each phrase is like meter of music: one-two-three, one-two-three.

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why he limits himself to pure observation here, when elsewhere he lapses into abstractions on the greater truths such scenes ultimately take on. Is he perhaps suggesting that there is something mystical, unknowable, about this dance? Something else? There seems to be a strong undercurrent of class-tension in this essay; is it possible that Lawrence, by giving us such an ecstatic, unblinking description of the dance, means to argue that anyone, regardless of class status, can be swept up in these emotions -- love, passion, and sex?

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My thinking on why Lawrence eliminates what you call as "greater truths" is that for Lawrence the dance here, and that is a metaphor for sex, is an experience where individuality is obliterated, eliminated for the moment of the experience. Class becomes irrelavant; the person has no individuality for that moment; he is either a man or a woman in contact with divinity.

Thanks Connie I enjoyed this. I have never read Twilight in Italy in it's entirety. And it's been a long time.

In an essay entitled "The Theatre", D.H Lawrence spends a great deal of his textual space discussing the relationship between men and women as he observes it among the "peasants" of a small Italian town.
-So the women triumph. They sit down below in the theatre, their perfectly dressed hair gleaming, their backs very straight, their heads carried tensely. They are not very noticeable. They seem held in reserve. They are just as tense and stiff as the men are slack and abandoned. Some strange will holds the women taut. They seem like weapons, dangerous. There is nothing charming nor winning about them; at the best a full prolific maternity, at the worst a yellow, poisonous bitterness of the flesh that is like a narcotic. But they are too strong for the men. The male spirit, which would subdue the immediate flesh to some conscious or social purpose, is overthrown. The woman in her maternity is the law-giver, the supreme authority. The authority of the man, in work, in public affairs, is something trivial in comparison. The pathetic ignominy of the village male is complete on sunday afternoon, on his great day of liberation, when he is accompanied home, drunk but sinister, by the erect, unswerving, slightly cowed woman. His drunken terrorizing is only pitiable, she is so obviously the more constant power.

Lawrence uses a images of death and decay to describe the relationships between Italian men and women in "The Theatre" (i.e. the "yellow, poisonous bitterness of the flesh that is like a narcotic" of the women; the "slack and abandoned" posture of the men). Does Lawrence believe that men and women destroy each other through marriage?

Throughout this series of essays Lawrence emphasizes the polar duality of opposites -- North versus South, death versus life, passion versus disillusion. In one of the opening passages in "The Crucifix across the Mountains," as Lawrence describes the appearance of the crucifixes along the mountainside, such a convergence of opposites becomes especially apparent:


But gradually, one after another looming shadowily under their hoods, the crucifixes seem to create a new atmosphere over the whole of the countryside, a darkness, a weight in the air that is so unnaturally bright and rare with the reflection from the snows above, a darkness hovering just over the earth. So rare and unearthly the light is, from the mountains, full of strange radiance.


In the space of just three relatively short sentences, Lawrence describes the crucifixes as "dark" then "bright" then "dark" then "light" so that light and dark appear to be one. What is the intended effect of this merging of opposites?


How does the symbolic fusion of light and dark reflect upon the object described -- the crucifix? In what way does the crucifix itself embody a merging of opposites?

Thank you.
don't worry ,these are my last questions.
thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by connie

Lawrence uses a images of death and decay to describe the relationships between Italian men and women in "The Theatre" (i.e. the "yellow, poisonous bitterness of the flesh that is like a narcotic" of the women; the "slack and abandoned" posture of the men). Does Lawrence believe that men and women destroy each other through marriage?

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Not necessarily. What I think Lawrence is reacting too here is what he considers an unnatural relationship between men and women. Woman, in his view, are supposed to be subjectgated to man's will, and here it is the woman we who are strong willed and men weak. He I think considers this the product of modernity. Something has gone wrong in the modern world where this reversal of roles has occurred.

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Throughout this series of essays Lawrence emphasizes the polar duality of opposites -- North versus South, death versus life, passion versus disillusion. In one of the opening passages in "The Crucifix across the Mountains," as Lawrence describes the appearance of the crucifixes along the mountainside, such a convergence of opposites becomes especially apparent:


But gradually, one after another looming shadowily under their hoods, the crucifixes seem to create a new atmosphere over the whole of the countryside, a darkness, a weight in the air that is so unnaturally bright and rare with the reflection from the snows above, a darkness hovering just over the earth. So rare and unearthly the light is, from the mountains, full of strange radiance.


In the space of just three relatively short sentences, Lawrence describes the crucifixes as "dark" then "bright" then "dark" then "light" so that light and dark appear to be one. What is the intended effect of this merging of opposites?

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Lawrence saw the world in dualism, where there were always two opposite poles, and when those poles are united it forms a complete whole. And that completeness is mystical, spiritual. Real life rarely forms this whole. There is man and there is woman. The bringing of the two together to form one (that's why the sex act is so important to Lawrence) is to reach a spiritual dimension. As individual ends of the pole, we have personality and individuality. When we form that one, then individuality and personality are obliterated and reaches a spiritual level.

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How does the symbolic fusion of light and dark reflect upon the object described -- the crucifix? In what way does the crucifix itself embody a merging of opposites?

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I think I described it above. Light and dark, polar opposites, come together for a religious significance.


I hope you got something out of this. I did my master's thesis on D.H. Lawrence. I may not always agree with his philosophy, but he sure is a great writer.

thank's virgil.
lawrence's travel's books are full of words that suggest light and dark.
The colours that he used alot are : black and white.
so even colours can have religious significance

so even animals .
in lemon gardens
_It is the spirit of the tiger. The tiger is the supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute. This is the

Tiger, tiger burning bright,
In the forests of the night
of Blake. It does indeed burn within the darkness. But the essential fate, of the tiger is cold and white, a white ecstasy. It is seen in the white eyes of the blazing cat. This is the supremacy of the flesh, which devours all, and becomes transfigured into a magnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed.

This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, the transfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh. Like the tiger in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until this fuel blazes up in me to the consummate fire of the Infinite. In the ecstacy I am Infinite, I become again the great Whole, I am a flame of the One White Flame which is the Infinite, the Eternal, the Originator, the Creator, the Everlasting God. In the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire, I am infinite.

This is the way of the tiger; the tiger is supreme. His head is flattened as if there were some great weight on the hard skull, pressing, pressing, pressing the mind into a stone, pressing it down under the blood, to serve the blood. It is the subjugate instrument of the blood. The will lies above the loins, as it were at the base of the spinal column, there is the living will, the living mind of the tiger, there in the slender loins. That is the node, there in the spinal cord.

So the Italian, so the soldier. This is the spirit of the soldier. He, too, walks with his consciousness concentrated at the base of the spine, his mind subjugated, submerged. The will of the soldier is the will of the great cats, the will to ecstasy in destruction, in absorbing life into his own life, always his own life supreme, till the ecstasy burst into the white, eternal flame, the Infinite, the Flame of the Infinite. Then he is satisfied, he has been consummated in the Infinite.

This is the true soldier, this is the immortal climax of the senses. This is the acme of the flesh, the one superb tiger who has devoured all living flesh, and now paces backwards and forwards in the cage of its own infinite, glaring with blind, fierce, absorbed eyes at that which is nothingness to it.

The eyes of the tiger cannot see, except with the light from within itself, by the light of its own desire. Its own white, cold light is so fierce that the other warm light of day is outshone, it is not, it does not exist. So the white eyes of the tiger gleam to a point of concentrated vision, upon that which does not exist. Hence its terrifying sightlessness. The something which I know I am is hollow space to its vision, offers no resistance to the tiger's looking. It can only see of me that which it knows I am, a scent, a resistance, a voluptuous solid, a struggling warm violence that it holds overcome, a running of hot blood between its Jaws, a delicious pang of live flesh in the mouth. This it sees. The rest is not.

And what is the rest, that which is-not the tiger, that which the tiger is-not? What is this?

What is that which parted ways with the terrific eagle-like angel of the senses at the Renaissance? The Italians said, 'We are one in the Father: we will go back.' The Northern races said, 'We are one in Christ: we will go on.'

What is the consummation in Christ? Man knows satisfaction when he surpasses all conditions and becomes, to himself, consummate in the Infinite, when he reaches a state of infinity. In the supreme ecstasy of the flesh, the Dionysic ecstasy, he reaches this state. But how does it come to pass in Christ?

It is not the mystic ecstasy. The mystic ecstasy is a special sensual ecstasy, it is the senses satisfying themselves with a self-created object. It is self-projection into the self, the sensuous self satisfied in a projected self.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is this Infinite into which we may be consummated, then, if we are poor in spirit or persecuted for righteousness' sake.

Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

To be perfect, to be one with God, to be infinite and eternal, what shall we do? We must turn the other cheek, and love our enemies.

Christ is the lamb which the eagle swoops down upon, the dove taken by the hawk, the deer which the tiger devours.

Thanks for all of your interesting postings! It prompted me to buy the book: "D. H. Lawrence and Italy: Twilight in Italy; Sea and Sardinia; Etruscan Places". Does anyone have any feedback on this book?