Time it should again.
Blessed are the powerful, for theirs is the kingdom of earth.
...LOVE WAS ONCE A LITTLE BOY
COLLAPSE, as often as not, is the result of persisting in an old attitude towards some important relationship, which, in the course of time, has changed its nature.
Love itself is a relationship, which changes as all things change, save abstractions. If you want something really more durable than diamonds you must be content with eternal truths like “twice two are four”.
Love is a relationship between things that live, holding them together in a sort of unison. There are other vital relationships. But love is this special one.
In every living thing there is the desire, for love, or for the relationship of unison with the rest of things. That a tree should desire to develop itself between the power of the sun, and the opposite pull of the earth’s centre, and to balance itself between the four winds of heaven, and to unfold itself between the rain and the shine, to have roots and feelers in blue heaven and innermost earth, both, this is a manifestation of love: a knitting together of the diverse cosmos into a oneness, a tree.
At the same time, the tree must most powerfully exert itself and defend itself, to maintain its own integrity against the rest of things.
So that love, as a desire, is balanced against the opposite desire, to maintain the integrity of the individual self.
Hate is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is individuality.
We live in the age of individuality, we call ourselves the servants of love. That is to say, we enact a perpetual paradox.
Take the love of a man and a woman, today. As sure as you start with a case of “true love” between them, you end with a terrific struggle and conflict of the two opposing egos or individualities. It is nobody’s fault: it is the inevitable result of trying to snatch an intensified individuality out of the mutual flame.
Love, as a relationship of unison, means and must mean, to some extent, the sinking of the individuality. Woman for centuries was expected to sink her individuality into that of her husband and family. Nowadays the tendency is to insist that a man shall sink his individuality into his job, or his business, primarily, and secondarily into his wife and family.
At the same time, education and the public voice urges man and woman into intenser individualism. The sacrifice takes the old symbolic form of throwing a few grains of incense on the altar. A certain amount of time, labor, money, emotion are sacrificed on the altar of love, by man and woman: especially emotion. But each calculates the sacrifice. And man and woman alike, each saves his individual ego, her individual ego, intact, as far as possible, in the scrimmage of love. Most of our talk about love is cant, and bunk. The treasure of treasures toman and woman today is his own, or her own ego. And this ego, each hopes it will flourish like a salamander in the flame of love and passion. Which it well may: but for the fact that there are two salamanders in the same flame, and they fight till the flame goes out. Then they become grey cold lizards of the vulgar ego.
It is much easier, of course, when there is no flame. Then there is no serious fight.
You can’t worship love and individuality in the same breath. Love is a mutual relationship, like a flame between wax and air. If either wax or air insists on getting its own way, or getting its own back too much, the flame goes out and the unison disappears. At the same time, if one yields itself up to the other entirely, there is a guttering mess. You have to balance love and individuality, and actually sacrifice a portion of each.
You have to have some sort of balance.
The Greeks said equilibrium. But whereas you can quite nicely balance a pound of butter against a pound of cheese, it is quite another matter to balance a rose and a ruby. Still more difficult is it to put male man in one scale and female woman in the other, and equilibrate that little pair of opposites.
Unless, of course, you abstract them. It’s easy enough to balance a citizen against a citizeness, a Christian against a Christian, a spirit against a spirit, or a soul against a soul. There’s a formula for each case. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, etc., etc.
But the moment you put young Tom in one scale, and young Kate in the other: why, not God Himself has succeeded as yet in striking a nice level balance. Probably doesn’t intend to, ever.
Probably it’s one of the things that are most fascinating because they are nearly possible, yet absolutely impossible. Still, a miss is better than a mile. You can at least draw blood.
How can I equilibrate myself with my black cow Susan? I call her daily at six o’clock. And sometimes she comes. But sometimes, again, she doesn’t, and I have to hunt her away among the timber. Possibly she is lying peacefully in cowy inertia, like a black Hindu statue, among the oak-scrub. Then she rises with a sighing heave. My calling was a mere nothing against the black stillness of her cowy passivity.
Or possibly she is away down in the bottom corner, lowing sotto voce and blindly to some far-off, inaccessible bull. Then when I call at her, and approach, she screws round her tail and flings her sharp, elastic haunch in the air with a kick and a flick, and plunges off like a buck rabbit, or like a black demon among the pine trees, her udder swinging like a chime of bells. Or possibly the coyotes have been howling in the night along the top fence. And then I call in vain. It’s a question of saddling a horse and sifting the bottom timber. And there at last the horse suddenly winces, starts: and with a certain pang of fear I too catch sight of something black and motionless and alive, and terribly silent, among the tree-trunks. It isSusan,her ears apart, standing like some spider suspended motionless by a thread, from the web of the eternal silence. The strange faculty she has, cow- given, of becoming a suspended ghost, hidden in the very crevices of the atmosphere! It is something in her will. It is her tarnhelm. And then, she doesn’t know me. If I am afoot, she knows my voice, but not the advancing me, in a blue shirt and cord trousers. She waits, suspended by the thread, till I come close. Then she reaches forward her nose, to smell. She smells my hand: gives a little snort, exhaling her breath, with a kind of contempt, turns, and ambles up towards the homestead, perfectly assured. If I am horse-back, although she knows the grey horse perfectly well, at the same time she doesn’t know what it is. She waits till the wicked Azul, who is a born cow-punching pony, advances mischievously at her. Then round she swings, as if on the blast of some sudden wind, and with her ears back, her head rather down, her black back curved, up she goes, through the timber, with surprising, swimming swiftness. And the Azul, snorting with jolly mischief, dashes after her. And when she is safely in her milking place, still she watches with her great black eyes as I dismount. And she has to smell my hand before the cowy peace of beingmilked enters her blood. Till then, there is something roaring in the chaos of her universe. When her cowy peace comes, then her universe is silent, and like the sea with an even tide, without sail or smoke: nothing.
That is Susan, my black cow.
And how am I going to equilibrate myself with her? Or even, if you prefer the word, to get in harmony with her?
Equilibrium? Harmony? with that black blossom! Try it!
She doesn’t even know me. If I put on a pair of white trousers, she wheels away as if the devil was on her back. I have to go behind her, talk to her, stroke her, and let her smell my hand; and smell the white trousers. She doesn’t know they are trousers. She doesn’t know that I am a gentleman on two feet. Not she. Something mysterious happens in her blood and her being, when she smells me and my nice white trousers.
Yet she knows me, too. She likes to linger, while one talks to her. She knows quite well she makes me mad when she swings her tail in my face. So sometimes she swings it, just on purpose: and looks at me out of the black corner of her great, pure-black eye, when I yell at her. And when I find her, away down the timber, when she is a ghost, and lost to the world, like a spider dangling in the void of chaos, then she is relieved. She comes to, out of a sort of trance, and
is relieved, trotting up home with a queer, jerky cowy gladness. But she is never really glad, as the horses are. There is always a certain untouched chaos in her.
Where she is when she’s in the trance, heaven only knows.
That’s Susan! I have a certain relation to her. But that she and I are in equilibrium, or in harmony, I would never guarantee while the world stands. As for her individuality being in balance with mine, one can only feel the great blank of the gulf.
Yet a relationship there is. She knows my touch and she goes very still and peaceful, being milked. I, too, I know her smell and her warmth and her feel. And I share some of her cowy silence, when I milk her. There is a sort of relation between us. And this relation is part of the mystery of love: the individuality on each side, mine and Susan’s, suspended in the relationship.
Cow Susan by the forest’s rim A black-eyed Susan was to him And nothing more — One understands Wordsworth and the primrose and the yokel. The yokel had no relation at all — or next to none — with the primrose. Wordsworth gathered it into his own bosom and made it part of his own nature. “I, William, am also a yellow primrose blossoming on a bank.” This, we must assert, is an impertinence on William’s part. He ousts the primrose from its own individuality. He doesn’t allow it to call its soul its own. It must be identical with his soul. Because, of course, by begging the question, there is but One Soul in the universe.
This is bunk. A primrose has its own peculiar prim- rosy identity, and all the oversouling in the world won’t melt it into a Williamish oneness. Neither will the yokel’s remarking: “Nay, boy, that’s nothing. It’s only a primrose!” — turn the primrose into nothing. The primrose will neither be assimilated nor annihilated, and Boundless Love breaks on the rock of one more flower. It has its own individuality, which it opens with lovely naivete to sky and wind and William and yokel, bee and beetle alike. It is itself. But its very floweriness is a kind of communion with all things: the love unison.
In this lies the eternal absurdity of Wordsworth’s lines. His own behaviour, primrosely, was as foolish as the yokel’s.
“A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him And nothing more — ”
A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him And a great deal more —
A primrose by the river’s brim Lit up its pallid yellow glim Upon the floor —
And watched old Father William trim His course beside the river’s brim And trembled sore —
The yokel, going for a swim Had very nearly trod on him An hour before.
And now the poet’s fingers slim Were reaching out to pluck at him And hurt him more.
Oh gentlemen, hark to my hymn!
To be a primrose is my whim Upon the floor, And nothing more.
The sky is with me, and the dim Earth clasps my roots.
Your shadows skim My face once more
Leave me therefore Upon the floor; Say au revoir
Ah William! The “something more’’ that the primrose was to you, was yourself in the mirror. And if the yokel actually got as far as beholding a “yellow primrose”, he got far enough.
You see it is not so easy even for a poet to equilibrate himself even with a mere primrose. He didn’t leave it with a soul of its own. It had to have his soul. And nature had to be sweet and pure, William- ish. Sweet-Williamish at that! Anthropomorphised! Anthropomorphism, that allows nothing to call its soul its own, save anthropos: and only a special brand, even of him!
Poetry can tell alluring lies, when we let our feelings, or our ego, run away with us.
And we must always beware of romance: of people who love nature, or flowers, or dogs, or babies, or pure adventure. It means they are getting into a love- swing where everything is easy and nothing opposes their own egoism. Nature, babies, dogs are so lovable, because they can’t answer back. The primrose, alas! couldn’t pipe up and say: “Hey! Bill! get off the barrow!”
That’s the best of men and women. There’s bound to be a lot of back chat. You can Lucy Gray your woman as hard as you like, one day she’s bound to come back at you: “Who are you when you’re at home?”
A man isn’t going to spread his own ego over a woman, as he has done over nature and primroses, and dogs, or horses, or babies, or “the people”, or the proletariat or the poor-and-needy. The old hen takes the cock by the beard, and says: “That’s me, mind you!”
Man is an individual, and woman is an individual. Which sounds easy.
But it’s not as easy as it seems. These two individuals are as different as chalk and cheese. True, a pound of chalk weighs as much as a pound of cheese. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the scales.
That is to say, you can announce that men and women should be equal and are equal. All right. Put them in the scales.
Alas! my wife is about twenty pounds heavier than I am.
Nothing to do but to abstract. L’homme est nelibre: with a napkin round his little tail.
Nevertheless, I am a citizen, my wife is a citizen- ess: I can vote, she can vote, I can be sent to prison, she can be sent to prison, I can have a passport, she can have a passport, I can be an author, she can be an authoress. Ooray! OO-bloomin- ray!
You see, we are both British subjects. Everybody bow!
Subjects! Subjects! Subjects!
Madame is already shaking herself like a wet hen.
But yes, my dear! we are both subjects. And as subjects, we enjoy a lovely equality, liberty, my dear! Equality! Fraternity or Sorority! my dear!
Aren’t you pleased?
But it’s no use talking to a wet hen. That “subject” was a cold douche.
As subjects, men and women may be equal.
But as objects, it’s another pair of shoes. Where, I ask you, is the equality between an arrow and a horseshoe? or a serpent and a squash-blossom? Find me the equation that equates the cock and the hen.
You can’t.
As inhabitants of my backyard, as loyal subjects of my rancho, they, the cock and the hen, are equal. When he gets wheat, she gets wheat. When sour milk is put out, it is as much for him as for her. She is just as free to go where she likes, as he is. And if she likes to crow at sunrise, she may. There is no law against it. And he can lay an egg, if the fit takes him. Absolutely nothing forbids.
Isn’t that equality? If it isn’t, what is?
Even then, they’re two very different objects.
As equals, they are just a couple of barnyard fowls, clucking! generalised!
But dear me, when he comes prancing up with his red beard shaking, and his eye gleaming, and she comes slowly pottering after, with her nose to the ground, they’re two very different objects. You never think of equality: or of inequality, for that matter. They’re a cock and a hen, and you accept them as such.
You don’t think of them as equals, or as unequals. But you think of them together.
Wherein, then, lies the togetherness?
Would you call it love?
I wouldn’t.
Their two egos are absolutely separate. He’s a cock, she’s a hen. He never thinks of her for a moment, as if she were a cock like himself; and she never thinks for a moment that he is a hen like herself. I never hear anything in her squawk which would seem to say: “ Areri 11 a fowl as much as you are, you brute! ‘‘ Whereas I always hear women shrieking at their men: “Aren’t I a human being as much as you are?”
It seems beside the point.
I always answer my spouse, with sweet reasonableness: “My dear, we are both British Subjects. What can I say more, on the score of equality? You are a British Subject as much as I am.”
Curiously, she hates to have it put that way. She wants to be a human being as much as I am. But absolutely and honestly, I don’t know what a human-being is. Whereas I do know what a British Subject is. It can be defined.
And I can sec how a Civis Roman urn, or a British Subject can be free, whether it’s he or she. The he- ness or the she-ness doesn’t matter
. But how a man can consider himself free, I don’t know. Any more than a cock-robin or a dandelion.
Imagine a dandelion suddenly hissing: “I am free and I will be free!” Then wriggling on his root like a snake with his tail pegged down!
What a horrifying sight!
So it is when a man, with two legs and a penis, a belly and a mouth begins to shout about being free. One wants to ask: which bit do you refer to?
There’s a cock and there’s the hen, and their two egos or individualities seem to stay apart without friction. They never coo at one another, nor hold each other’s hand. I never see her sitting on his lap and being petted. True, sometimes he calls for her to come and eat a titbit. And sometimes he dashes at her and walks over her for a moment. She doesn’t seem to mind. I never hear her squawking: “Don tyou think you can walk over me!’’
Yet she’s by no means downtrodden. She’s just herself, and seems to have a good time: and she doesn’ t like it if he is missing.
So there is this peculiar togetherness about them. You can’t call it love. It would be too ridiculous.
What then?
As far as I can see, it is desire. And the desire has a fluctuating intensity, but it is always there. His desire is always towards her, even when he has absolutely forgotten her. And by the way she puts her feet down, I can see she always walks in her plumes of desirableness, even when she’s going broody.
The mystery about her, is her strange undying desirableness. You can see it in every step she takes. She is desirable. xnd this is the breath of her life.
It is the same with Susan. The queer cowy mystery of her is her changeless cowy desirableness. She is far, alas, from any bull. She never even remotely dreams of a bull, save at rare and brief periods. Yet her whole being and motion is that of being desirable: or else fractious. It seems to unite her with the very air, and the plants and trees. Even to the sky and the trees and the grass and the running stream, she is subtly, delicately and purely desirable, in cowy desirability. It is her cowy mystery. Then her frac- tiousness is the fireworks of her desirableness.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 975