Uncovering the unconscious
IN his short but sweet 1924 essay, entitled simply Books, DH Lawrence asks if our treasured volumes are “just toys?... the toys of consciousness?” And does this make us little more than brainy children, endlessly amusing ourselves with these “printed toys called books?”
In our technologically advanced internet age, where information exists everywhere out in the ether, it’s all too easy to forget that books were a relatively advanced form of technology.
Printing presses brought a huge breakthrough in communication, with books arriving as a technological revolution in themselves!
Lawrence reminds us of this, with certain misgivings. Back in the days of hieroglyphs, “when men had to write on rocks and obelisks, it was rather difficult to lie. The daylight was too strong”.
But the covers of a book are like “two lids” over “an underground hole”, he says. They create an environment where we can tell lies to ourselves.
Man is “a thought adventurer”, engaged in “an endless venture into consciousness”. But he faces a dilemma. This pursuit of exciting new discoveries must involve our whole being, including our blood. And we must avoid lies and trickery.
As we wander down an “everdangerous valley of days we may lead ourselves astray”. Fate won’t resolve things, only “the living adventurous spark in our souls”. We may imagine a catastrophe will restore us. But, as Lawrence observes, the people who escaped the terrible times of the Russian Revolution were “scared more senseless than ever”.
Not only are Lawrence’s essays, novels, tales, poems, plays, travel books, not to forget most of his letters, great adventures in thought, but he wandered the world in a spirit of adventure, seeking places and people compatible with his remarkable intense religion of life.
■■ 100 years ago, on May 4, 1922, he arrived at Freemantle in Australia, beginning a 99-day stay – three months and a week – Down Under. He was running out of funds – his 1,000 dollars travel money had almost gone – and found himself staying at the Savoy Hotel, Perth, which he told Robert Mountsier “is the most expensive hotel I’ve ever stayed in – leave it tomorrow”.
He arrived on the “same boat as Annie Besant”, a prolific writer on religious, philosophical and political subjects. He tells Mabel Dodge Sterne how he ventured into the bush, finding “wonderful sky and air and freshness”. He doesn’t plan to stay long. But over just 33 days (averaging 3,500 words per day) our word-wizard of Oz will write his eighth major novel, Kangaroo. Some feat!