PARTISAN REVIEW
6
problems. To these problems any serious discussion of Gide, Proust,
Mann and Joyce must likewise sooner or later be conducted. No mat-
ter into what unpopularity metaphysics has fallen, it is the only rel-
evant approach to these writers. So much seems necessary before
offering the following interpretation of Nietzsche's phrase: Nature
(the undifferentiated flux of phenomena) takes on form; every form
involves limitations; and as a result every individual must exist in a
state of perpetual inner strife which can be terminated only through
dissolution into his original substance. We need not ask what these
limitations are, whether there is any less drastic mode of solution, or
even whether this is in fact an accurate statement of the problem of
being. It will have to be enough to suggest that Lawrence's career
was like a ritualistic exhaustion of the paradoxical ambition to enjoy
nature, in the sense defined above, and to preserve the character of his
individuality at one and the same time.
Nature in Lawrence is commonly supposed to be identified
tout
court
with sex; but there are innumerable passages in which it is care-
fully explained that sex is but the medium or agency of a power still
greater than itself. For this reason he is so hard on those who, like
Benjamin Franklin, profane it in terms of hygienic "use." Nor is it a
pastime for a jaded epoch: "Buy a king-cobra and try playing with
that." Contrary to the general belief, Lawrence is more truly moral
on the subject of sex than on any other subject. Also it is made clear
that sex is not to be considered an end in itself, a solution to the indi-
vidual problem; this is the thesis of
The Rainbflw
and
Women in Love.
What the power that it represents actually is Lawrence attempts to
reveal through a variety of means. In his best poems and novels this
power is rendered for us through an interfusion of characterization
and description: the early poem "Fireflies" and the scene by the pool
in
Women in Love
are examples. Lawrence's specialty as a novelist,
it may be noted, is in the recording of such "vibrations." This power
is also personified in the familiar little dark man who remains so iden-
tical throughout the long roll-call of the novels. But it is perhaps most
clearly indicated through the metaphorical light-dark antithesis. By
contrast with the world that he rejects Lawrence gives us the sharpest
impression of the world that he would put in its place. If the light
symbolizes the over-spiritualized, over-intellectualized,
and wholly
devitalized "white consciousness" of our time, which it should not be
difficult for most readers to recognize, the dark can only stand for its
opposite-the unspiritual, unintellectual and wholly vital world of
nature. The darkness materializes into "the dark gods" and finally
"the dark god"; it invests itself in the innumerable forms of dragons,
birds, insects, and little black men. But what it really amounts to
