“he was troubled by no conscience in that respect. He knew that conscience was chiefly tear of society, or fear of oneself.”
The book main contemplation is one’s existence in relation to society. This is being analyzed though parameters of class, psychology, instincts, sex, society, regime etc’.
Sexuality and sensuality can reduce shame on individual level and to counter society’s process of formality or formulation, can be used to let go of excessive self-awareness, rationality and analysis, the standstill of time and disintegration and getting closer to instinct and creation. Society is conflicting those in order to impose order, (the illusion of) control. DH Lawrence is critical towards Socratic rationality as a process of progression of man-kind, he is critical towards the industrial era, rural life in England both aristocracy and working class at the same time at the same period he lived. He pounders about the co-existence of labor and sexuality much like but in quite a different way than Freud or later the Frankfurt school and Herbert Marcuse.
“Oh ‘enjoying oneself’! Another modern form of sickness.”
Venice serves as a motive, it was founded on money, thrived on money and died because of it:
“Too many people in the piazza, too many limbs and trunks of humanity on the Lido, too many gondolas, too many motor-launches, too many steamers, too many pigeons, too many ices, too many cocktails, too many menservants wanting tips, too many languages rattling, too much, too much sun, too much smell of Venice, too many cargoes of strawberries, too many silk shawls, too many huge, raw-beef slices of watermelon on stalls: too much enjoyment, altogether far too much enjoyment!”
Today after a century the case is still the same. Tourism killed Venice in the sense that it is more an amusement park than a city, as it becomes more and more popular it will be remembered because of the ice-creams and gondolas and not for the rich history and complexity of it being in the center of the golden age of the renaissance, the full spectrum of meaning and beauty that Venice is lost. This happened because Venice was brought to the masses as an object of enjoyment and fun, through progress and democratization, everyone can have the same share in Venice. This is also Democracy, it has the power to erase meaning, history and beauty. For DH Lawrence related it with the willingness of the Italian people to sell out and not put their passion first for their culture and values.
continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses
Juvenal
Bread and circuses, the saying is still valid today, society rather have amusement rather than explore a sense of deeper meaning (because it doesn’t come easy).
DH Lawrence is warning us against the dangers of society. It is true that today many of the elements which he pointed out are less relevant (working class in the mines, aristocracy 100 years ago etc.’) we made great progress with sexual liberation, social mobility , woman’s rights etc’, but some elements are really just re-shuffled : Democracy is still the “three-fanged serpent” (“Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”), Success the Bitch-goddess is not only chased by the aristocrats but literally everyone. Industrialism, society’s super structure brought hope and promises for the future and a for better life, mostly materialistic, today we are realizing it. Aren’t we?
“After all, the moderns were right when they felt contempt for the performance; for it was a performance. It was quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humour, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance. Even a Maupassant found it a humiliating anti-climax. Men despised the intercourse act, and yet did it”
For more : Thomas Mann - Death in Venice, Frankfurt school / Marcuse - one dimensional man / Eros and Civilization, Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
Yes. Thank you. And Lawrence was appalled by the unwholesome stench from discharges into the canals of Venice. Today Venice still suffers as gigantic cruise ships moor there, which again cater for this shallow pleasure principle which so disgusted Lawrence. If more people had read Lawrence, and read him actively, they may have developed a more sensitive awareness and a greater reverence for life. The world might not be the collosal doomed rubbish dump it has become today.
Thank you, David, for reading and for commenting. Venice is the death place of culture: of Wagner, of Gustav von Aschenbach (Thomas Mann). The Elitism of Lawrence in relation to his writing and lifestyle suggests the (possible) importance of aesthetics, imagination, the written or spoken word, action, over the power of history and the contingency of time in relation to most ‘common people’, who are unable to transcend above it, as Lawrence would probably formulate it. But times have changed, to fully agree with Lawrence, we would still be romantic and nostalgic in my opinion. Instead, we can see in Lawrence an example of a writer who lifted himself way above his own circumstances, and we can hope to do the same. In his writing he created his own universe, one which we can still ‘visit’, one which keeps us away from the triviality of places like Venice of today, the colossal doomed rubbish dump.
“Is there anyone but must repress a secret thrill, on arriving in Venice for the first time-or returning thither after long absence-and stepping into a Venetian gondola? That singular conveyance, come down unchanged from ballad times, black as nothing else on earth except a coffin-what pictures it calls up of lawless, silent adventures in the plashing night; or even more, what visions of death itself, the bier and solemn rites and last soundless voyage!”