Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

My actual review is here. It’s a brief, emotional response, rather than a traditional review.

What follows below is just a collection of quotes, grouped loosely by theme, plus a (very) few comments about the change of tone at the end (not spoilers, as the events I’ve alluded to are made plain in the book’s Introduction).

As 2014 crossed into 2015, I was reading Stoner for the first - and second - time.
As 2015 crossed into 2016, I was reading Lawrence for the first time in so long it might have been the first time.
Utterly different, but equally, achingly, wonderful styles of writing.

I had thought I liked disliked florid prose (as in The King of Elfland’s Daughter), preferring the sparse beauty of books like Stoner and Plainsong. I’m so glad the hypnotic yet arousing words of Lawrence widened my horizons.

It's surprising to note that Kate Chopin was writing of flames and flowers in Lawrencian ways when Lawrence was only 13 years old! For example, The Storm.

Spoiler tags are for easy scrolling, not because of actual spoilers.

Nature as Nature

(view spoiler)[
The fecundity of the natural world is ever present in minds, in actions, and on the pages I held: plants and flowers, sky, water, earth, birds and bees, eyes and heads.

� “Outside, the rain slanted by in fine, steely, mysterious haste, emerging out of the gulf of darkness.�

� "Big holes were blown into the sky, the moonlight blew about. Sometimes a high moon, liquid-brilliant, scudded across a hollow space and took cover under electric, brown-iridescent cloud-edges. Then there was a blot of cloud, and shadow. Then somewhere in the night a radiance again, like a vapour. All the sky was teeming and tearing along, a vast disorder of flying shapes and darkness and ragged fumes of light and a great brown circling halo, then the terror of a moon running liquid-brilliant into the open for a moment, hurting the eyes before she plunged under cover of cloud again."

� "Very strange was the constant glitter of the sea unsheathed in heaven, very warm and sweet the graveyard, in a nook of the hill catching sunshine and holding it as one holds a bee between the palms of the hands, when it is benumbed. Grey grass and lichens and a little church, and snowdrops among the coarse grass, and a cupful of incredibly warm sunshine."

� Plum trees, “All glittering and snowy and delighted with the sunshine, in full bloom under a blue sky. They threw out their blossom, they flung it about under the blue heavens.�

� “The sun was coming. There was a quivering, a powerful, terrifying swim of molten light. Then the molten source itself surged forth, revealing itself� Everything was newly washed into being in a flood of new, golden creation.� (hide spoiler)]

Nature as Sex
(view spoiler)[
� “She would� feel her blood running, feel herself lying open like a flower unsheathed in the sun, insistent and potent with demand.�

� "She felt herself opening, unfolding, asking, as a flower opens in full request under the sun, as the beaks of tiny birds open flat, to receive, to receive... she was as new as a flower that unsheathes itself and stands always ready, waiting, receptive."

� “Here she would open her female flower like a flame, in this dimness that was more passion than light.�

� “Her body opened up like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon. She wanted the moon to fill into her, she wanted more, more communion with the moon, consummation.�

� “It was as if the stars were lying with her and entering the unfathomable darkness of her womb, fathoming her at last. It was not him.� (hide spoiler)]

Sex as Sex
(view spoiler)[
Despite its reputation, you could read most of this to a small child or proverbial maiden aunt without them having any idea of the degree of sexual content.

Even a passage like this, which is about as explicit as it ever gets, might escape notice, “From his body through her hands came the bitter-corrosive shock of his passion upon her� - at least until a couple of sentences later, when “she rose from her knees�.

� “No love� only the maddening, sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant gratification in the sensual beauties of her body.�

� “He swayed in a voluptuous, lingering way, against her� to unfasten the buttons of her glove� The close-working, instinctive subtlety of his fingers upon her hand sent the young girl mad with voluptuous delight... Then his hand closed over hers, so firm, so close, as if the flesh knitted to one thing, his hand and hers.�

� “The unimpressible hardness of his body, that was soft and smooth under her fingers, that came to her with such absolute service.� (hide spoiler)]

Flames, Fire, Ash
(view spoiler)[
� The first thing Will makes for Anna is a wooden butter stamp - of a phoenix.

� “The flame leaped up him, under his skin. She wanted it, this new life from him, with him.�

� “He burst into flame for her� to bury himself in the depths of her in an inexhaustible exploration.�

� “His limbs, his body, took fire and beat up in flames. She clung to him, she cleaved to his body. The flames swept him, he held her in sinews of fire. If she would kiss him! He bent his mouth down. And her mouth, soft and moist, received him. He felt his veins burst with anguish of thankfulness, his heart was made with gratefulness, he could pour himself out upon her forever.�

� “But to him, she was a flame that consumed him� till he existed only as an unconscious, dark transit of flame, deriving from her.�

� After a fight that resulted in something precious being burned, “a new, fragile flame of love came out of the ashes of this last pain�.

� “She was all lambent biting flames, he was a red fire glowing steadily.�

� After an argument, “His mouth was full of ash, his soul furious�.

� “She had the ash of disillusion gritting under her teeth� Always she was spitting out of her mouth the ash and grit of disillusion, of falsity.�

� “The silk, slipping fierily on the hidden, yet revealed roundness and firmness of her body, her loins, seemed to run in him like fire, make his brains burn like brimstone. She liked it, the electric fire of the silk under his hands upon her limbs.�

� “Like a flame it took hold of her limbs and body. In the first flaming hours of wonder, she did not know what she felt. She was as if tied to the stake. The flames were licking her and devouring her. But the flames were also good.� (Pregnancy) (hide spoiler)]

Touch
(view spoiler)[
For all that this book is written in metaphors, the overwhelming need to touch and be touched runs through it like a twitching tendon.

� “Her blood seethed to anguish in her. She wanted to touch him now, only to touch him.�

� "Now, ah now, she was swimming in the same water... The girl moved her limbs voluptuously, and swam by herself, deliciously, yet with a craving of unsatisfaction. She wanted to touch the other, to touch her, to feel her."

� "But in the revelations of her body through contact with his body, was the ultimate beauty.�

� “For her, he was the kernel of life, to touch him alone was bliss.�

� “They walked on, hand in hand, along opposite horizons touching across the distance� two separate people.�

� “All he wanted was to know through touch.�

� “No love, no words, no kisses even, only the maddening perception of beauty consummate, absolute through touch. He wanted to touch her, to discover her, maddeningly he wanted to know her.� (hide spoiler)]

Tension of Opposites
(view spoiler)[
Every relationship, whether between parent and child, or between lovers, is portrayed with contrast and tension. Everyone, everything is pulled two ways: love/hate, attraction/revulsion, fire/water, close/distant, hot/cold, fire/ash, separate/joined.

� “A hatred that was burningly close to love� a love that was keenly close to hatred.�

� “She realised that he was a dark opposite to her, that they were opposites, not complements.�

� “The connection between her and her father as ever stronger. Yet it was always straining to break.�

� “She was afraid of him, repelled by him, and yet attracted� He detected in her a kinship with his own dark corruption.� (hide spoiler)]

Repetition
(view spoiler)[
As well as the repetition of certain imagery, especially floral and fiery, Lawrence achieves poetic, almost liturgical effects, by repeating words in close proximity.

� “She sat amid illumination, illumination and luminous shadow all around her, her soul very bright.�

� “His heat was not always to suffuse her, suffuse her, through her mind and her individuality, till she was of one heat with him, till she had not her own self apart� He seemed to lap her and suffuse her with his being, his hot life, till she did not know whether she were herself.�

� “So softly, softly, with infinite caressiveness, he kissed her, and the whole of his being seemed to fondle her.�

� “Then softly, oh softly, so softly� his lips touched her cheek, and she drifted through strands of heat and darkness.�

� “She quivered, and quivered, like a tense thing that is struck� He kissed her and she quivered as if she were being destroyed, shattered� She was all dark, will-less, having only the receptive will.� (hide spoiler)]

Bible and Christianity
(view spoiler)[
The church plays an important part in some aspects of everyday life, but when beliefs are discussed, they are invariably unconventional, and often heretical. Will finds spirituality more in church architecture and music than faith itself. In discussing whether Jesus turning water to wine really happened, “In truth of fact it had not. But for his soul it had�.

There is also some inappropriately intimate behaviour in a church. Yet when this book was banned, shortly after publication, it was for obscenity, not blasphemy. (Ah, the power of lesbianism to shock.)

Far more prominent, are the analogies between carnality and transfiguration, creation, Eden, baptism, and sacrifice, as well as rainbows and fire.

� The wedding night was “the time of his trial and his admittance, his Gethsemane and his Triumphal Entry.�

� “Coming together� the baptism to another life� Everything was lost and everything was found� At last they had thrown open to doors, each to the other.�

� Will spends ages carving Creation of Eve, “a small vivid, naked female shape, was issuing like a flame towards the hand of God�. When it is mocked, he burns it.

� “All that mattered was that he should love her and she should love him and they should live kindled to one another, like the Lord in two burning bushes that were not consumed.�

� “A married couple makes one Angel� When a man’s soul and a woman’s soul unites together - that makes an Angel� Bodies and souls, it’s the same.�

� “The pure love came in sunbeams between them, when she was like a flower in the sun to him� feeling the radiance from the Almighty beat through him like a pulse, as he stood in the upright flame of praise, transmitting the pulse of Creation.�

� Glorying in her environment, the mingling sounds of the natural and manmade world are Anna’s Magnificat.

� “She was the ark and the rest of the world was his flood.�

� “Sin was absolute and everlasting: wickedness and badness were temporary and relative� They wanted a sense of the eternal and immortal, not a list of rules for everyday conduct.�

� “The children lived the year of Christianity� their hearts were born and came to fullness, suffered on the cross, gave up the ghost, and rose again� this rhythm of eternity in a ragged, inconsequential life.�

� “She wanted Jesus to love her deliciously, take her sensuous offering, to give her sensuous response.�

� “Suddenly lust seized her� she tempted him.�

� “In religion there were the two great motives of fear and love.�

� “She was in dread of the material world, and in dread of her own transfiguration.�

� “Their final entry into the source of creation.�

� “Her face was wet with tears, very bright, like a transfiguration in the refulgent light.� (hide spoiler)]

Rainbows
(view spoiler)[
� “Her father and her mother now met to the span of the heavens, and she, the child, was free to play in the space beneath, between.�

� “Dawn and sunset were the feet of the rainbow that spanned the day, and she saw the hope and promise.�

� “Her doors opened under the arch of the rainbow� She was a door and a threshold� through her another soul was coming� looking out, shading its eyes for the direction to take.�

� The cathedral “spanned round with the rainbow, the jewelled gloom folded music upon silence, light upon darkness, fecundity upon death.�

� “And the rainbow stood on the earth� She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.� (hide spoiler)]

Women, Men, and the Ending
(view spoiler)[
Positive Women
� Lydia “learned nursing as a mark of her emancipation�.

� “He learned to submit to Anna� her Matriarchy.�

� Ursula longed to be independent, and knew “she had always her price of ransom - her femaleness.� But first, she wants to try to conquer the man’s world of work. Her first pay packet makes her “independent� and an important member of the working community.�

� “I believe there are many men� one might love� Passion can’t last. That is why passion is never happy.�

� “Why should I not go on and love all the types I fancy?� (Although “her own dread, was she just promiscuous?�)

� “She was not ashamed� She had taken him, they had been together.�

Positive Men
The men are actively involved as fathers (and as a step-father) and generally embrace women of independent mind and desires.

There is visceral empathy for a wife in labour: “He and she, one flesh, out of which life must be put forth. The rent was not in his body, but it was of his body. On her the blows fell, but the quiver ran through him, to his last fibre. She must be torn asunder for life to come forth, yet still they were one flesh, and still, from further back, the life came out of him to her� their flesh was one rock from which the life gushed, out of her who was smitten and rent, from him who quivered and yielded.�

Submit?!
After all the empowered and empowering women, it comes to this:

� “For what had a woman but to submit?�

� “The child bound her to him... Could she not have a child of herself?�

� “Who was she to have a man according to her own desire?�

� “It was not for her to create, but to recognise a man created by God. The man should come from the Infinite and she should hail him.�

Ugh! (hide spoiler)]

Other Quotes
(view spoiler)[
� “Queer little breaks of consciousness seemed to rise and burst like bubbles out of the depths of his stillness.�

� “Relaxed against him, mingling into him.�

� “As they lay close together, complete and beyond the touch of time or change, it was as if they were at the very centre of all the slow wheeling of space and the rapid agitation of life� for their moment they were at the heart of eternity, whilst time roared far off, forever far off, towards the rim.�

� Awesome cathedral architecture, “On the brink of the unrevealed. He looked up to the lovely unfolding of the stone. He was to pass within to the perfect womb.�

� “She laid hold of him for her dreams.�

� “He was the warm colouring to her dreams, he was the hot blood beating within them.�

� “She reached him her mouth and drank his full kiss, drank it fuller and fuller� filled as though she had drunk strong, glowing sunshine.�

� A new teacher, facing a class, “She felt utterly non-existent� she stood before her class not knowing what to do� she was naked to them� They were a collective, inhuman thing.�

� An experienced teacher “could keep order and inflict knowledge on a class with remarkable efficiency.�

� A proposal is made “in the strange, coldly gleaming insinuating tone that chilled the sunshine into moonlight.�

� “Time folded away and the echo of knowledge filled the timeless silence.�

� “The religious virtue of knowledge was become a flunkey to the god of material success.� (hide spoiler)]

Bordering on Parody?
(view spoiler)[
Lawrence’s language will not be to everyone’s taste, and just occasionally I think he went too far, but I found such (few) instances amusing:

� “Ah, the great range he would have opened up to her, the illimitable endless space for self-realisation and delight for ever.�

� “‘What are you, you pale citizens?� her face seemed to say� ‘you primeval darkness falsified to a social mechanism.�

� “She saw the shiny knob of the rhubarb thrust upwards upon the thick red stem, thrust itself like a knob of flame through the soft soil.� (hide spoiler)]

Beauty in Ugliness
(view spoiler)[
Despite the occasional, maybe accidentally comical touch, Lawrence can describe ugliness in a way that implies a curious beauty.

� “The streets were like visions of pure ugliness� Everything was amorphous, yet everything repeated itself endlessly� The place had the strange desolation of a ruin� The whole place was just unreal, just unreal� It was like some gruesome dream, some ugly, dead, amorphous mood become concrete� The place was a moment of chaos perpetuated, persisting, chaos fixed and rigid.� (A mining town.) (hide spoiler)]