Penny Hero (dot) Net

The following are things I don’t want to forget, insights that I need to re-articulate, and possible points of tension/discovery that I might use in my essay on DH Lawrence.

Examination of HOW Lawrence is a modernist

• like Conrad, he’s reacting against old writing styles and cliches and conventions. Content and form changes, but conrad is more impressionistic and symbolic in his attempt to understand the unconscious mind. Lawrence attempts to articulate the unconscious and put into words the inner workings of human emotions and what he believes modern technological de-humanization is stripping from our human experience. (Look at his essays for where he says we are at fault and western world of materialism is bad etc. maybe…)
• critical or complicated relationship between human beings and the change that the modern world brings to them. Technology intrudes on the brangwens, and it is in part good. it brings success, opportunity etc. individuals can search for their Great Meaning in more places.

Lawrence’s ideas in terms of identity and the “social-construction of the soul” (my term)

• different characters find their individual meaning in different ways. Tom=land. Lydia=her secretiveness? Will=art/archetecture. Anna=children. Ursula=literature/school?
• all are still driven to love someone and be with someone else to find meaning. their different identities come into conflict or create tension with the other. (Anna and Will’s object/need-more struggle… Anna “wins” which difuses their relationship. Only after he finds a bodily object identification and feels empowered through that, does it reinvigorate.

Problems with Lawrence’s attempt to articulate what he and Lawrence both seem to realize is not articulatable.

• Conrad uses dense stream of consciousness symbolism and delayed decoding, imitates the thinking of a human being that suggests the effect of discovering and knowing the unconsciousness.
• Lawrence invents a new language to try to articulate what can’t be articulated in our language. I think this is very problematic. In my own reading, after reading his theories, it virtually “killed” the impact of his novel because what had previously been metaphor and subtle became direct and explicit. It just “felt wrong” in that way that can’t be clearly articulated. begs the question… how could lawrence think that he would be capable of doing justice to the unconscious pre-language workings of the human soul.

Other:

• Lawrence’s relationships are an oscillation between being the drive to be independent, and the drive to be with someone else and find meaning through someone else. Lawrence theorizes this in a metaphysical/psudoscientific way in his essays and believes in the magnetic fields etc. but the oscillation and back and forth is key. creates a living changing conduit that contributes to the health of the Relationship as an entity.