Começo a ver conexões em tudo -- coincidências que se tornam translúcidas porque estou, sei lá, mais perceptivo, mais ciente, antenado àquilo que acontece a minha volta. Vejamos, hoje à noite mesmo: minha mulher, Shirley, me pergunta sobre a citação de D.H. Lawrence que eu tinha lido a ela há alguns meses; vem do último livro do F.R. Leavis, Thoughts, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence, mas encontrei a citação original, do ensaio-poema "We Need One Another", no livro Late essays and articles:
"A skylark that was alone on an island would be songless and meaningless, his individuality gone, running about like a mouse in the grass. But if there were one female with him, it would lift him singing into the air, and restore him his real individuality."And so with men and women. It is in relationship to one another that they have their true individuality and their distinct being: in contact, not out of contact. This is sex, if you like. But it is no more sex than sunshine on the grass is sex. It is a living contact, give and take: the great and subtle relationship of men and women, man and woman. In this and through this we become real individuals, without it, without the real contact, we remain more or less nonentities."But of course, it is necessary to have the contact alive and unfixed. It is not a question of: Marry the woman and have done with it.-- That is only one of the stupid recipes for avoiding contact and killing contact. There are many popular dodges for killing every possibility of true contact: like sticking a woman on a pedestal, or the reverse, sticking her beneath notice; or making a ‘model’ housewife of her, or a ‘model’ mother, or a ‘model’ help-meet. All mere devices for avoiding any contact with her. A woman is not a ‘model’ anything. She is not even a distinct and definite personality. It is time we got rid of these fixed notions. A woman is a living fountain whose spray falls delicately around her, on all that come near. A woman is a strange soft vibration on the air, going forth unknown and unconscious, and seeking a vibration of response.--Or else she is a discordant, jarring, painful vibration, going forth and hurting everyone within range. And a man the same. A man as he lives and moves and has being, is a fountain of life-vibration, quivering and flowing towards some-one, something that will receive his outflow and send back an inflow, so that a circuit is completed, and there is a sort of peace. Or else he is a source of irritation, discord, and pain, harming everyone near him."But while we remain healthy and positive, we seek all the time to come into true human relationship with other human beings. Yet it has to happen, the relationship, almost unconsciously--we can’t deliberately do much with a human connection, except smash it: and that is usually not difficult. On the positive side, we can only most carefully let it take place, without interfering or forcing."We are labouring under a false conception of ourselves. For centuries, man has been the conquering hero, and woman has been merely the string to his bow, part of his accoutrement. Then woman was allowed to have a soul of her own, a separate soul. So the separating business started, with all the clamour of freedom and independence. Now the freedom and independence have been rather overdone, they lead to an empty nowhere, the rubbish heap of all our dead feelings and waste illusions."The conquering hero business is as obsolete as Marshal Hindenburg, and about as effective. The world sees attempts at revival of this stunt, but they are usually silly, in the end. Man is no longer a conquering hero. Neither is he a supreme soul isolated and alone in the universe, facing the Unknown in the eternity of death. That stunt is also played out, though the pathetic boys of today keep on insisting on it: especially the pathetic boys who wrap themselves in the egoistic pathos of their sufferings during the late war."But both stunts are played out, both the conquering hero and the pathetic hero clothed in suffering and facing Eternity in the soul’s last isolation. The second stunt is, of course, more popular today, and still dangerous to the self-pitying, played-out specimens of the younger generation. But for all that, it is a dud stunt, finished."What a man has to do today is to admit, at last, that all these fixed ideas are no good. As a fixed object, even as an individuality or a personality, no human being, man or woman, amounts to much. The great I AM does not apply to human beings, so they may as well leave it alone. As soon as anybody, man or woman, becomes a great I AM, he becomes nothing. Man or woman, each is a flow, a flowing life. And without one another, we can’t flow, just as a river cannot flow without banks. A woman is one bank of the river of my life, and the world is the other. Without the two shores, my life would be a marsh. It is the relationship to woman, and to my fellow-men, which makes me myself a river of life."And it is this, even, that gives me my soul. A man who has never had a vital relationship to any other human being doesn’t really have a soul. We cannot feel that Immanuel Kant ever had a soul. A soul is something that forms and fulfils itself in my contacts, my living touch with people I have loved or hated or truly known. I am born with the clue to my soul. The wholeness of my soul I must achieve.--And by my soul I mean my wholeness. What we suffer from today is the lack of a sense of our own wholeness, or completeness, which is peace. What we lack, what the young lack, is a sense of being whole in themselves. They feel so scrappy, they have no peace. And by peace I don’t mean inertia, but the full flowing of life, like a river.
"We lack peace because we are not whole. And we are not whole because we have known only a tithe of the vital relationships we might have had."
Queria só fazer uma pequena citação, mas com Lawrence não dá para parar -- tudo é bom. Mas aqui está a coincidência: tinha acabado de ver o filme "Altered States", de Ken Russell, com William Hurt e Blair Brown (mais duas pequenas coincidências: o nome da mulher do Russell é Shirley e ele já adaptou a obra-prima do Lawrence, Women in Love, para o cinema).
Quando comecei a analisar esse ensaio-poema do Lawrence, acima, vi que descreve muito bem o filme que acabo de ver: no final, o personagem do William Hurt vira anti-matéria e o da Blair Brown matéria. Eles estão caindo num abismo do nada e acabarão sendo engolidos -- a única coisa que salva a alma deles é o amor mútuo. Ele precisa de fluir para fora, rumo à mulher, completando assim seu circuito, e aí "há um tipo de paz". Se formos analisar bem, há vários outros momentos aqui em que a citação descreve exatamente o que está acontecendo no filme. Começo a suspeitar que o Ken Russell leu esse ensaio antes de fazer o filme....
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