Don Ramon opens
his heart to Kate, where he yearns to relate to women in a transfigural or
metaphysical realm, his Morning Star where souls of men and women can meet.
Lawrence is possibly having a go at the liberal mores that reappeared in the
60s. As far as the 60s go, the sense of soul-camaraderie that appeared in San
Francisco and radiated outwards is the transcendental side of things, so maybe
he was hip to that? As far as the 20s go I can’t comment; only that our present
state of emptiness may be more what Lawrence is driving at.
Having got that
off his chest, following the burning of Christian effigies and the installing
of the “men of Quetzalcoatl”, there is a rebellion and a turreted scene of
savagery that is well worth quoting at length.
Suddenly she gave a
piercing shriek, and in one leap was out of her retreat. She had seen a black
head turning the stairs.
Before she knew it,
Ramón jumped past her like a great cat, and two men clashed in mid-air, as the
unseen fellow leaped up from the stairs. Two men in a crash went down on the
floor, a revolver went off, terrible limbs were writhing.
Ramón's revolver was on
the floor. But again there was a shot from the tangled men, and a redness of
blood suddenly appearing out of nowhere, on the white cotton clothing, as the
two men twisted and fought on the floor.
They were both big men.
Struggling on the ground, they looked huge. Ramón had the bandit's
revolver-hand by the wrist. The bandit, with a ghastly black face with rolling
eyes and sparse moustache, had got Ramón's naked arm in his white teeth, and
was hanging on, showing his red gums, while with his free hand he was feeling
for his knife.
Kate could not believe
that the black, ghastly face with the sightless eyes and biting mouth was
conscious. Ramón had him clasped round the body. The bandit's revolver fell,
and the fellow's loose black hand scrabbled on the concrete, feeling for it.
Blood was flowing over his teeth. Yet some blind super-consciousness seemed to
possess him, as if he were a devil, not a man.
His hand nearly touched
Ramón's revolver. In horror Kate ran and snatched the weapon from the warm
concrete, running away as the bandit gave a heave, a great sudden heave of his
body, under the body of Ramón. Kate raised the revolver. She hated that
horrible devil under Ramón as she had never hated in her life. Yet she dared
not fire..
.. She stiffened her
wrist and fired without looking, in a sudden second of pure control. The black
head came crashing at her. She recoiled in horror, lifted the revolver and
fired again, and missed. But even as it passed her, she saw red blood among the
black hairs of that head. It crashed down, the buttocks of the body heaving up,
the whole thing twitching and jerking along, the face seeming to grin in a
mortal grin.
Glancing from horror to
horror, she saw Ramón, his face still as death, blood running down his arm and
his back, holding down the head of the bandit by the hair and stabbing him with
short stabs in the throat, one, two, while blood shot out like a red
projectile; there was a strange sound like a soda-syphon, a ghastly bubbling,
one final terrible convulsion from the loins of the stricken man, throwing
Ramón off, and Ramón lay twisted, still clutching the man's hair in one hand,
the bloody knife in the other, and gazing into the livid, distorted face, in
which ferocity seemed to have gone frozen, with a steady, intent, inhuman gaze.
(chapter
XIX The Attack on Jamiltepec)
The primitive
resilience laid bare is a matter of life and death; no words as even a word
could mean death. The sheer primitivism of Lawrence’s ideal man and woman was
too much for Aldous Huxley, who satirised him in Brave New Word. Aldous
came from the establishment family of Thomas Henry Huxley, known as “Darwin’s
bulldog” for his enthusiastic support.
And then
Ramón glanced at Kate, as she stood near the stairs with the revolver. His brow
was like a boy's, very pure and primitive, and the eyes underneath had a
certain primitive gleaming look of virginity. As men must have been, in the first
awful days, with that strange beauty that goes with pristine rudimentariness. (chapter XIX)
The primitive
naivety continues in like vein, with Ramon’s strange wish to bring back “the
vision of the living cosmos.”
It was one of
those little periods when the rain seems strangled, the air thick with thunder,
silent, ponderous thunder latent in the air from day to day, among the thick,
heavy sunshine. Kate, in these days in Mexico, felt that between the volcanic
violence under the earth, and the electric violence of the air above, men
walked dark and incalculable, like demons from another planet. (chapter XX Marriage by Quetzalcoatl)
The link here
with pulps is close (Almuric) and is
made clearer when Kate is gradually transmogrified into the wife of Huitzilopochtli
They were men
of flesh and blood, they understood her presence, and bowed low, looking up at
her with flashing eyes. And she knew what it was to be a goddess in the old
style, saluted by the real fire in men's eyes, not by their lips. (chapter XX)
The marriage
ceremony – the transfiguration – is conducted at twilight in the rain.
Kate did not
quite know how to put on the slip, for it had no sleeves nor arm-holes, but was
just a straight slip with a running string. Then she remembered the old Indian
way, and tied the string over her left shoulder; rather, slipped the tied
string over her left shoulder, leaving her arms and part of her right breast
bare, the slip gathered full over her breasts..
.Kate lifted her face
and shut her eyes in the downpour.
'This man is my rain
from heaven,' she said.
'This woman is the earth
to me--say that, Cipriano,' said Ramón, kneeling on one knee and laying his
hand flat on the earth.
Cipriano kneeled and
laid his hand on the earth.
'This woman is the earth
to me,' he said.
'I, woman, kiss the feet
and the heels of this man, for I will be strength to him, throughout the long
twilight of the Morning Star.' (chapter XX)
Followed by the pledge
to “the star that is between night and day.”
Then she put on another
of the slips with the inverted blue flowers that had been laid on the bed for
her, and over that a dress of green, hand-woven wool, made of two pieces joined
openly together down the sides, showing a bit of the white, full under-dress,
and fastened on the left shoulder. There was a stiff flower, blue, on a black
stem, with two black leaves, embroidered at the bottom, at each side. And her
white slip showed a bit at the breast, and hung below the green skirt, showing
the blue flowers.
It was strange and
primitive, but beautiful. (chapter XX)
