Transcendence in Light and Dark

It has been mentioned in the classroom (by Dr. Stuber, I recall) that Lawrence admired the Platonic dialogue; it was also discussed that a conflictual, antagonistic (in the sense of a struggle, a contest), dialogic collision of ideas seems to be the way that ideas are developed in the novel. It was also suggested that in the chapter "Moony", Birkin throws stones at the moon to destroy its white-finality (or "frozen-eternality", a phrase Birkin uses in "Snow" on pp. 409), to unsettle its circular integrity and to introduce a conflict of light and shadow on the surface of the water.

But, rather than a sort of beauty-contest of ideas, which-one's-gonna-win, transcendence or a sort of Hegelian synthesis is the aim or motivation of characters. They seek to overcome incompatible or contradictory goals that they hold, or to discover if the limits of impossible are really what they seem to be. For instance, Birkin on the face of things seems to be the one desiring to maintain some sort of bond in mutual isolation with Ursula, but she cleverly points out that this essentially means subducting her desires (for a passionate luminous love with Birkin) to his, a bullying domination. It must be his mystical transcendence that will be achieved, not hers. This is a big problem.

And I think the book really stages this problem for us. It makes it very hard for us to say what kind of life, love, bond, sexuality, or set of conscious experiences are good, that is, recommended. I would like to conclude this by a short-but-close reading of a page of "Excurse", which seems to me from its language to be the second time -- after "Gladitorial" -- that two characters achieve some kind of transcendent experience together. So, starting at pp. 311-312, Birkin is described as "conscious all over, all his body awake with a simple glimmering awareness....like a thing that is born." This sentence strongly suggest that Birkin is now in some kind of body-consciousness that he has sought, a complete sensual experience that does not subordinate body to mind. This body-mind transcendence is connected to the duality of light and darkness by the participle "glimmering", which is to say, radiant darkly, sparkling dimly. The next paragraph then relays that this occurs at "dusk", and describes a cathedral "settling under the gloom of the coming night...the golden lights showed like slabs of revelation...". Just a few lines later, DHL reiterates this stated admixture of light and dark when Birkin describes the same cathedral as "quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark hollow." To reintroduce this idea of this commingling once again, the hymn that DHL quotes just after this goes:

"Glory to thee my God this night
For all the blessings of the light -- ".

The following paragraph describes Ursula in terms of hyperfine and awake sensory awareness, sense by sense, first her ear hearing "the tune [fall] out, drop by drop," then her awareness of the smell of "straw and stables and petrol," and of the stars above.