The idea of love in Women in love
著者（英） Haruko Imaizumi
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 27
page range 51‑66
year 1973‑11‑22
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000016490
THE IDEA
OFLOVE IN
WOll/fEN IN LOVEHARUKO IMAIZUMI
I
"The Love Ethic of D. H. Lawrence" IS the title of a book by Mark Spilka. Spilka presents pertinent and correct understanding of Lawrence surely in some points, but to my thinking he does not penetrate into the core of Lawrence. He is walking close around the core, sometimes away from it, but not touchi.ng, and much less, pene- trating it. That i.s why the book is felt missing something. It does not give me entire satisfaction.
At the beginning Spilka writes:
I think it can be shown that Lawrence was a religious artist, and that all his work was governed by religious ends. In his fiction ... he tried to write a kind of fourth-dimensional prose, so as to give his readers the effect of religious depth.1
I quite agree with him. But I want to hear further a clear explana- tion of "religious." And what is "fourth-dimension"? Spilka quotes many of Lawrence's words and phrases with almost no, or unsatisfac- tory, interpretations. After saying that Lawrence has been called a
"vitalist," Spilka says, '" Organicist' would come much closer to the mark, since the goal of life, for Lawrence, was ... the achivement of 'full, spontaneous being.'''2 What is " full, spontaneous being" ? Af- ter quoting several passages from vVomen in Love, Spilka writes: "By 'passionate struggle into conscious being,' Lawrence means the emer-
1. Mark Spilka, The Love Ethic oj D. H Lawrence (B!oomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), p. 3.
2. Ibid., p. 4.
C 51 )
gence from some partial or mechanical state of being into organic wholeness."8 What is "organic wholeness" and how can it be achieved? Questions arise one after another as I read the book. In his explanation of "fourth dimension," Spilka brings up Cassirer's theory of language, myth and religion. He says language moves in the middle kingdom between the" indefinite" and the" infinite." In the realm of mythic and religious conception, one order of "ineffable"
represents the upper limit of language, which would correspond with the Christian version of the infinite-static, timeless and absolute-and the other represents the lower limit or the "indefinite," which would correspond with the more primitive concept of mana and with any similar concept involving a highly relative force or flow: W ords- worth's religious flux, Nietzsch's Dionysian force, or Bergson's elan vital. Lawrence utilized this concept in his novels like The Rainbow and Women in Love. I see Spilka's opinion and I do not think he is utterly wrong. But what he says does not go down with me. I won- der whether such a way of reasoning is proper and enough to under- stand Lawrence.
All this comes from not taking the words Lawrence uses as he means. A word means a certain concept generally admitted, but it is given peculiar meanings by an individual, or in certain times, fields, or occasions. To understand Lawrence correctly we must see through what meaning and context he uses a word in, especially such word., as self, soul, individuality, the unknown, darkness, consciousness, my- stery, and so on, which might be called "Lawrencian terms" whose meaning is almost always the same in Lawrence's works. Indeed the misunderstanding of Lawrence seems to come mainly from these mis- leading "Lawrencian terms." The best way to understand them is to know his philosophy of life stated in Psychoanalysis and the Uncon- scious and Fantasia of the Unconscious written in 1920. The summary of the main part of his theory, which is very confusing, is as follows.
The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental and has nothing to do with cognition. It can be only mysteriously experienced. There are four great centers of the primal consciousness, of which the most important is the solar plexus beneath the navel. It is the nucleus first
3, Ibid., p. 5.
formed the moment two parent nuclei fuse. At this original center of consciousness, I am I, the root of all knowledge and being is est- blished. The original nucleus is divided into other life centers, but that first knowledge remains in the solar plexus, where the primal life of an embryo is connected with his mother's life. So the solar plexus is the centripetal and sympathetic life center. This center divides, and the second center, the lumbar ganglion, is formed. This is the centrifugal and voluntary life center, and is the origin of all the nuclei of the voluntary system. Here the knowledge I am I is known in distinction from what is not as I am.
Thus in every child there is a pre-mental mode of experience and this mode is dual. There are an urge towards merging and an urge towards individuality. We must keep in mind that Lawrence insists on the primal knowledge I am I, which means "I" is not merged into other beings, though there is an urge toward merging.
The important thing is that these two urges exist, that their polar antinomy is life itself, and that the consciousness which the two urges manifest is subjective.
Next two new centers are formed. They are the cardiac plexus in the breast and the thoracic ganglion in the shoulders. They cor- respond to the centers below in their activities. Here the pre-mental experience takes on an objective mode. The knowledge here is you are you.
These four life centers develop before birth and before the de- velopment of the brain. Because the consciousness at the four centers is pre-mental it is "dark," and it is called the unconscious. Man is able to live soundly through the perfect activities of the unconscious at these four centers. The activities of the cerebrum begin much later. All our active desire, genuine impulse, love, hope, everything originates mysteriously at the four center-the wellheads of our ex- istence. The mind can only register what results from the emanation of the dynamic unconscious and the communication of the unconscious with its object, and can form knowledge. The misery of the modern civilization is due to the fact that the four centers are neglected.
The solar plexus is the most important center for two reasons beside the reason that it is the original nucleus of life. The one is
that the parent nuclei remain in the solar plexus. The parent nuclei live in every individual and give direct connection, for the fecundat.
ing nuclei are the very essence of the blood. The other reason, which includes the first, is that the Holy Ghost, the Creator of life, dwells in the solar plexus. Though the parent nuclei remain in an individual, every individual is a new unit of unique individuality, which emanates from the fusion of the parent nuclei by dint of the Holy Ghost. Each of the new individuals has his Holy Ghost and he is a unique new souL So blood is life itself, and life is created by the Holy Ghost, who dwells in the soul, in the solar plexus, in the innermost part of man. In Lawrence, life, the unconscious, individuality, soul, blood and the Holy Ghost are interchangeable terms, though, needless to say, the Holy Ghost is supreme. The activities of the Holy Ghost are a mystery man never can know. This unknown and unkowable, there- fore, "dark" Holy Ghost is another name for Lawrence's" dark God."
Lawrence on one occasion writes as if his dark God and the Holy Ghost were identical, and on another occasion he writes as if they were dif- ferent. In any case we may take them synonymous, for Lawrence re- fuses to express or explain God and the Holy Ghost in words. Through.
out his life and certainly after 1911, Lawrence had his own concept of God who is "dark" in the sense that He is beyond human knowl- edge, although the expresson "dark God" is first found in Kangaroo.
In his letter to his sister in 1911, Lawrence wrote:
It requires a lot of pain and courage to come to discover one's own creed, and quite as much to continue in lonely faith. . .. Whatever name one give Him in worship we all strive towards the same God ...
What does it matter the name we cry? It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals.'
In Sons and Lovers written in 1912 the germ of the same idea of God can be found. "He had ... come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel inside oneself for right and wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realize one's own God."5
4. H. T. Moore, (ed.), The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence (London:
Heinemann, 197D), V 01. I, p. 76.
5. D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (The Phoenix ed. ; London: Heinemann,
In The Rainbow written in 1914, Lawrence's idea of God is found m Lydia's belief in the Great Absolute, the Mystery, wherein she has her being and who is never to be expressed in language nor to be reached with Dogma.6
In one of the essays written in 1918, the same idea is seen.
The Holy Spirit, the unknowable, is single and perfect for us ....
There is tbe unknown and the unknowable which propounds all crea- tion .... we can only accept it as a term of our own limitation and ratification. We can only know that from the unknown, profound desire enter in upon us, and that the fulfilling of these desires is the fulfilling of creation.7
In Kangaroo written in 1922, the expression "dark God" appears:
"He wanted men once more to refer the sensual passion of love sa- credly to the great dark God ... "8 and'" There is God. But forever dark, forever unrealisable. . .. The unutterable name, because it can never have a name. The great living darkness which we represent by the glyph, God.'''9
In The Plumed Serpent written in 1924, the God is also called the Morning Star.
Men and women should know that they cannot, absolutely, meet on earth .... there is the small gulf which is none the less complete because it is ... so nearly non"existent ... , Even though I eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, Christ is Christ and I am I, and the gulf is impassable. . .. Any attempt to close it is a violation, and the crime against the Holy Ghost.
That which we get from the beyond, we get it alone. The final me I am, comes from the farthest off from the Morning Star. ...
If we would meet in the quick, we must give up ... the daily I, and putting off ourselves ... meet unconscious in the Morning Star. ...
1968), p. 256. All the succeeding references to Lawrence's works will be to this edition, except Kangaroo.
6. Cf. D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (London: Heinemann, 1968), p. 99.
7. D. H. Lawrence, "Love," Phoenix ed. E. D. McDonald (London: Heine"
mann, 1970), p. 156.
8. D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, (Thin"Paper ed. ; London: Martin Seeker, 1922), p.226.
9. Ibid., p. 298.
"Vithout transfiguration we shall never get there .... to the Morning Star, and there alone meet his fellow man.10
Thus the God in the sentences quoted above is always the same God, that is, the unknowable, unutterable and absolute "dark God"
on whom all creation depends, whether He may be expressed as the unknown, the beyond, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, the Mystery, the Absolute, the Morning Star, God, and so onY ,life ought to ac- cept and obey this Great God. But how? It is by obeying our in- most desires and by silencing the activities of the mind or intellect.
We must be careful not to take the desires for our egoistic desires.
Inmost desires originate at the four centers. The Holy Spirit in the solar plexus manifests itself as the spontaneous desire, urge, impulse, intuition and instinct, which might be called the voice of the soul.
Silencing the activities of the mind does not mean neglecting them.
The mind is a power in man, but its business is to act as an agent.
The manager is the soul. Lawrence hates the mind to behave as if it were the soul or the Holy Ghost. That is why he abuses such ac- tivities of reason or the mind as knowing, understanding, idealizing and abstracting. It does not mean he negates reason. If we call the activities of the mind of human, the activities of the four centers- the unconscious-are of God. So the soul is almost synonymous with God or the Holy Spirit. The most important thing for us to do is to be humble to the Absolute, learn to be alone and try to know what our soul really wants, and to be courageous and patient to accept what is unkown and new without fear or hesitation. I:f only we obey the spontaneous urge, we are not bound by the idea of our own mak- ing. We need not plan, expect, calculate in advance nor worry for the future. We need not be anxious about what to do, what to say, what to eat or how to make money. They are given from the un- 10. D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent (London: Heinemann, 1965), p. 249.
ll. But we must he careful of the word dark. "Dark" or "darkness" (and some other words also) is used in two senses in Lawrence. One is in ex·
pressing" dark God "-creative-and therefore in the affirmative sense, and the other is in the context of "corruption and dissolution," in the negative sense. Cf. p. 245 and p. 418 of Women in Love for the examples of " dark.
ness" used in the negative sense.
known newly each time. Haven't we read the same thing in the Bible?
Another one of the most important words Lawrence uses is self.
Lawrence draws a clear line between self and ego. Ego is of self- consciousness or the mind, and self is of the unconscious. Self-being myself-means I am I, I am I with my own soul. I am not any of other people. I am I is the root of all knowledge and being estab- lished at the original centers of consciousness. In Lawrence self, soul and the Holy Spirit are used synonymously, so he sometimes writes self "Self" but it doesn't mean Self is God. Being myself means following the voice of the soul, obeying the God inside and coming to my own intrinsic fullness of being.
As previously stated, God in Lawrence is the dark God in the sense that He is unutterably great. Lawrence uses the word God, but he says nobody can define the word God and that a word nobody can define isn't a word but just a noiseY But if we give some con- cept of the enigmatic Absolute called God, God in Lawrence is " what is." Lawrence is very close to existentialist thinkers in his philosophy.
Some critics notice this fact. John Middleton Murry writes in the introduction of his book that "he was the living embodiment of yet another theory which is part of the intellectual climate of today: the philosophy of existentialism."13 Father W. Tiverton says that "one of the great virtues of Lawrence was his sense of the ISness rather than the OUGHTness of religion,"14 and after quoting a passage from Fantasia of the Unconscious in which Lawrence insists that no man and woman are married in true sense unless they have a living pur- pose beyond them and their soul is really committed to the purpose, Tiverton says, "Here is the Christian-existentialist theme of ' engage- ment'. And Lawrence is at his greatest when he expresses it ... not in conceptual terms, but in his writing, his poems and his novels."15
We will compare Lawrence with Heidegger, a German existentialist who employs the expression" what is" in the final nomenclature of 12. D. H. Lawrence, "On Being Religious," Phoenix, p. 599.
13. John Middleton Murry, D. H Lawrence: Son of Woman, (London: Jo- nathan Cape, 1954), p. xiv.
14. Father William Tiverton, D. H. Lawrence and Human Existence, (London:
Rockliff, 1951), p. 124.
15. Ibid., p. 137.
reality. After citing severals entences to interpret the diversity of the meaning of "is," and saying that it is perhaps impossible to pick out a common meaning as a universal generic concept under which all modes of 'is' might be classiffed as species, Heidegger says as follows:
Yet a single determinate trait runs through them all. . .. The limita- tion of the meaning of 'being' remains within the sphere of actuality and presence of permanence and duration, of abiding and occurrence.16 He says as follmvs in his explanation of the distinction between being becoming;
What becomes is not yet. 'What is need no longer become. \Vhat 'is,' the essent (existent), has left all becoming behind it if indeed it ever become or could become. What' is,' in the authentic sense also resists every onsurge of becomingP
There has been a past and there will be a future. But there is a present. And the existence, the actuality at the moment is of what is now. Therefore the God, if it has any actuality, can be seen in what is. To quote from Lawrence: "There is no Before and After there is only Now. . .. In the dreamless Now, I AA1."18 Since" be- ing" is always in a state of flux, the interest lies in the new and changed being that emerges every second.19 That is why Lawence uses the word new very often.
One of Lawrence's poems goes like this: " ... any lovely and ge- nerous woman/at her best and her most beautiful, being god, made manifest,/ . .. There is no god/apart from poppies and the flying fish,/men singing songs, and women brushing their hair in the sun./
The loveJy things are god ... "20 Here we see Lawrence's God as whatever is. As is stated before, any creature that becomes itself, 16. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Aletaphysics, trans, Ralph Manheil11
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 91-92.
17. Ibid., p. 95.
18. D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent (London: Heinel11ann, 1965), pp. 172- 173.
19. As for Lawrence's concept of God, and these sentences I owe them to Cha- man Nahal, D. H Lawrence (New York: A. S. Barnes, c 1970), pp. 203-209.
20. D. H. Lawrence, "The Body of God," The Complete Poems Vol. HI (Lon- don: Heinel11ann, 1957), pp. 132-133. This poem was written during a year before his death in 1930.
that attains to its fullness of being is incomparable. Being incompar- able, absolute, it is a god or God. But it is not so in the same sense as the unknown Absolute, the Creator. It is a metaphor or a figure of speech. We call a man who has a genius for something a god;
for example, a god of mathematics. The word God is one of the most misused words and the most heavily laden of all the words. So Lawrence says no one can define the word God. God comprises every- thing. God comprises my Self. But God is not everything nor my Self. Everything in the universe belongs to God. If Lawrence says we are God when we realize our Self or become ourselves or some- thing like that, it means that we are comprised in or belong to God.
Lawrence does not insist on the irrational. " Irrational" means
"not endowed with reason." What Lawrence insists on is something beyond reason. It is not opposed to reason. It comprises reason and goes beyond it. It might he called faith. Not being reached with rea- son, it is dark. As we have seen already, "Lawrencian terms" mean something beyond human knowledge. The core of "Lawrencian terms" is the unknown or dark God or the unconscious. This un- conscious has nothing to do with the unconscious of Freud. The greatest and the most important key to Lawrence is his concept of God. His idea of love, his view of sex, marriA.ge, life, or his opinion on education-everything of Lawrence can be induced to and deduced from his concept of God. Any criticism of Lawrence, if missing the the correct understanding of his concept of God, is off the point. If we are offended with Lawrence for saying that a bird flying beauti- fully is a god, Self is God and so on, it is impossible for us to under- stand Lawrence.
n
'With what has been said thus far in mind, we will easily under- stand the idea of love in ~Vomen in Love. It is told by Birkin, the mOllthpiece of Lawrence. According to Birkin, the love of modern people is to press their egoism on others under the name of love how- ever modest and altruistic they may look. Birkin instead insists on his idea of love called the relationship of "star-equilibrium."21 That 21. I borrow this expession from Mark Spilka.
is: love is not the root of everything but only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated "me," that cannot mingle. There is the beyond in every man which is further than any emotional relationship. There is no love there. To Ursula, who asks what there is if there is no love, he says.
There is ... a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you-not in the emotional, loving plane-but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, be- cause there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman-so there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever-because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and respon- sible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.22
Ursula says it is purely selfish and Birkin says it is pure but isn't selfish.
Because I don't !mow what I want of you. I deliver myself over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge be- tween us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.2S
He later repeats his belief that one must forever commit oneself to a conjunction with the other. But it is not selfless. It is a maintaining of the self in mystic balance and integrity, like a star balanced 'with another star.
" A final you," "an isolated' me '," "two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures" mean the same thing, that is, each be- comes himself, comes to his own fullness of being, by which he is in- comparable and absolute, gets into the heaven of existence, and there- fore "beyond responsibility," "there is no speech and no terms of 22. D. H. Lawrence, 'Women in Love (London: Heinemann, 1969), pp. 137-138.
23. Ibid., p. 138.
61 agreement," "no understanding has been reaped," "nothing known applies" and" quite inhuman."24 For responsibility, agreement, speech, and standard are the things in the relative world, the world of space and time. In Birkin's words "I don't know what I want of you,"
" know" means knowing in the head. What Birkin wants to say is that we should be ready to accept the" unknownness," in other words, otherness of other people. If we demand and force others to be what we vmnt of them to be, it means that we do not recognize them as they are, but form an idea of others as we want them to be. If we try to know them completely and analyze them, it means that we violate them, because each man is a unique soul with the unknowable Holy Ghost in him. So in "star-equilibrium" what we need is "the pledge between us, that we ,vill both cast off everything ... so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us." And such a pledge is possible only because we trust in the unknown and deliver ourselves over to it. Only to the unknown can we be entirely naked without any consideration for ourselves. In short, being ourselves and
" star-equilibrium" are impossible without our faith in the unknown.
"Star-equilibrium" means the human relationship in which it is ac- cepted that each man is a unique and absolute soul and his otherness is respected. That is why Birkin says that" star-equilibrium" is pure but not selfish nor sefiess, and that it is a maintaining of the self in mystic balance and integrity.
When Birkin and Ursula go driving he tells her that he wants to go far away with her. "I should like to go with you-nowhere ...
That's the place to get to-nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world's somewheres, into our own nowhere."25 Ursula says there isn't any other world except the one given to them. He answers there IS.
'There's somewhere where we can be free-somewhere where one needn't wear much clothes-none even-where one meets a few people who have gone through enough, and can take things for granted- 24. Here is another instance of "Lawrencian terms." The word inhuman is
usually used for what is below human beings, meaning cruel or unkind.
Lawrence on the contrary uses it for what is above man.
25. D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, p. 307.
where you can be yourself, without bothering ...
, But where-?' she sighed.
'Somewhere-anywhere. Let's wander off. That's the thing to do ... '
'To be free, in a free place, with a few other people!'
'It isn't really a locality, tbough,' he said. 'It's a perfected rela·
tion between you and me, and others-so that we are free together.'25
"Star.equilibrium," the perfected relation with others, being really free, being oneself, coming to one's fullness of being, and so on, sug- gest one and the same thing. It is to have one's place in heaven, to be with God. In other expression Lawrences often uses, to "live in the fourth dimension," to be like" a rose" or" a poppy." The place where we can establish the perfected relation is therefore somewhere, anywhere and nowhere-nowhere in the sense that the fourth dimen- tion is not to be reckoned in terms of space and time.
HI
" Star.equilibrium" can be compared with Buber's famous "I·
Thou" relationship. I and Tfwu, written by Martin Buber and pub- lished in 1923, is one of the works to give a complete account of ex- istentialism in its theological bearings. There are many similarities in the philosophy of I and Tfwu and that of Lawrence.
According to Buber, there are two radically different ways in which a man relates himself to other men and to everything in the universe. One is called the relation of "I-Thou" and the other "I·
It." I in "I-Thou" is quite different from I in "I-It." In" I·Thou "
-the personal relation---one subject I, a person, confronts another subject Thou, a person. In" I-It" the subject I experiences and uses It, an object, a thing. The word" I-Thou" can only be spoken with the whole being, while "I-It" cannot. In "I-Thou" the Thou is shown to be a reality, that which exists in the present, given to me, but it is not bounded by me. Thou cannot be appropriated nor ex- perienced nor possessed as an object. The characteristic situation of
"I-Thou" is one of meeting: I meet the other. So long as I remain 26. Ibid., p. 308.
in relation with my Thou, I can only know it in the relation itself, where there are two centers of consciousness, two subjects. "I-Thou,"
the primary word of relation and togetherness, is characterised by mutuality, directness, intensity, and ineffability. "I-It," the primary word of experiencing and using, takes place within a man and not between him and the world like" I-Thou." In" I-It," the world of objects or things, there is one center of consciousness, one subject, an I which experiences, arranges and appropriates. This is the char- acteristic world of modern activity.
In the world of human beings, "I-Thou" and "I-It" alternate with each other. The Thou must continually become It, and the It may again become a Tlwu,. but it will not be able to remain one, and it need not become Thou at all. The world of It is set in the con- text of space and time. The world of Thou is not set in the context of either of these. Man can live continuously and securely in the world of It, but he can only actualize his humanity if he interpenet- rates this world with relation to the Thou. "Without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man."
There is one Thou which never becomes an It, the "eternal Thou," God. Though we may speak of God in the third person, it is a metaphor and the reality of His approach is constituted in the fullness of the relation of an I with a Thou. God's being and works cannot be expressed. God may only be "addressed, not expressed."
The relation of persons is established through, first, each one's taking his stand in living mutual relation with a living central Thou that is received in the present. In short "I-Thou" is consummated only in the direct relation with the eternal Thou.
Only in pure relation" I-Thou" we are dependent and creaturely, and at the same time free and creative. It is here in man's religious situation, his being there in the Presence that the indissoluble anti- nomy of human existence-necessity and freedom, object and being- seeks no reconciliation. The significance of man's situation mentioned above is that it is lived continually, ever anew, without foresight, forethought and prescription in the totality of its antinomy. We are compelled to take necessity and freedom-the antinomy-to ourselves that they may be lived together in our being as they are one.
Love is between I and Thou. Solitude, if it means to free oneself from intercourse of experiencing and using things, is always necessary for the act of relation.
"Star-equilibrium" is parallel with "I-Thou" in signifying the human relationship built up by God in which there are two subjects and men are truly free and at the same time dependent. Several sentences of Buber's and Lawrence's can be cited for further under- standing, and only one of them shall be extracted here. It is about the oneness of antithesis, which doesn't mean the synthesis of anti- thesis but the oneness of two opposite things, yet their remaining two, in the relation with God.
Buber mentions the exclusive nature of "I-Thou," and here are such words of Birkin: "Love is a direction which excludes all other directions."27 But only in the relation with God exclusiveness is in- elusiveness, and vice versa.
Every real relation in the world is exclusive, the Other breaks in on it and avenges its exclusion. Only in the relation with God are unconditioned exclusiveness and unconditioned inclusiveness one and the same, in which the whole universe is implied.
Every real relation in the world rests on individuation, this is its joy-for only in this way is mutual knowledge of different beings won -and its limitation-for in this way perfect knowledge and being known are foregone. But in the perfect relation C" Perfect relation"
or "pure relation" always means the relation with the eternal Thou in Buber.) my Thou comprehends but is not my Self ...
Every real relation in the world is consummated in the inter- change of actual and potential being; every isolated Thou is bound to enter the chrysalis state of the It in order to take wings anew. But in pure relation potential being is simply actual being as it draws breath, and in it the Thou remains present. By its nature the eternal Thou is eternally Thou; only our nature compels us to draw it into the world and the talk of It.28
Giving and taking, another antithesis, are also one and the same.
Birkin's explanation of "star-equilibrium" that there "One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible 27. D. H. Lawrence, Women in LO've, p. 143.
28. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: T. &
T. Clark, 1953), pp. 99-100.
65 for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking ac- cording to the primal desire," and "I deliver myself over to the un- known, in coming to you. .. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be ... " signify the oneness of giving and taking, and suggest the oneness of exclusiveness and inclusiveness Buber mentions. And then "that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us." This sentence will be as follows in Buber.
For to step into pure relation is not to disregard everything but to see everything in the Thou, not to renounce the world but to establish it on its true basis. To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence .
. . . He who goes out with his whole being to meet his Thou and carries to it all being that is in the world, finds Him who cannot be sought.29
And such a man is truly free, just as those who are in " star-equilib- rium" are free. "He who forgets all that is caused and makes deci, sion out of the depths, who rids himself of property and raiment and naked approaches the Face, is a free man ... "30
In the modern world where almost every activity is characterized by "I-It," Lawrence wants to impress upon people the greatness and importance of the" I-Thou" relationship as a significant privilege of human beings. As Buber says, "I-Thou" cannot be taught, and God is "the unfathomable," "Mysterium Tremendum" and cannot be ex- plained. So it is with the" star-equilibrium," the ultimate human re- lationship. Yet both Buber and Lawrence must use words as the means of communicating their inexplicable philosophy. And Lawrence, being an artist who expresses it less articulately, less logically and more emotionally and artistically than a theologian, cannot help resort- ing to the somewhat misleading" Lawrencian terms," repeating the same expressions. This is a particular disadvantage on the part of Lawrence.
The "star-equilibrium," Lawrence's idea of love m Women in 29. Ibid., p. 79.
30. Ibid., p. 53.
Love, might be concluded as follows.
(1) Love, a perfect relationship is a religious experience. It is by dint of the unknown God to have the experience. We have to accept and obey our inner voice, inmost desires, the message from the unknown without fear or comment. We have our place in the heaven of existence by establishing a perfect relationship. There is no love without the unknown.
(2) It is now and here in this world that we have our place in the heaven of existence. Man in this world is a being possessing not only spirit but also a body. The body is as important as spirit. Life therefore is very precious. There is no love without life. And it is the unknown that gives man life.
To Lawrence love, life and everything in the universe is of and from and by the unknown dark God.