- 1 James Carlyle, the writer’s father, was a Scottish Calvinist mason, who “worked with full commitmen (...)
- 2 “1906. A38 Thomas Carlyle. The French Revolution, Heroes and Hero Worship, Sartor Resartus. Read by (...)
- 3 “They record with just pride that [Mahommet] would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. […] No (...)
1Despite the considerable lapse of time (almost a century) between the lives of Carlyle (1795-1881) and Lawrence (1885-1930), several critics have pointed to the numerous echoes between the views, arguments and phraeseology of the two writers, while others, notably F.R. Leavis, have discounted such a hypothesis. This warrants a closer scrutiny of the possible parallels between the two writers. Their similar social backgrounds may account for the rise of some of the notions which I will be examining: both men belonged to working-class families, one a mason’s son, the other a collier’s, and were familiar with hard work; both were immersed in religious education by a parent who encouraged them to pursue their intellectual inclinations.1 Carlyle’s fascination with great men and exceptional deeds, discussed at length in various works which Lawrence had read by 1906,2 arguably fostered the latter’s attraction to the aristocratic figure. Yet both occasionally seem to favour the notion of an exceptional being who rises from the masses, and whose understanding of the common people endows him with greater sincerity, wisdom and authority than upper-class politicians. For instance, Carlyle’s admiration for Mahomet, the hero as prophet, and for Robert Burns, the hero as man of letters, stems from the greatness they created out of their material poverty and humble origins.3 Likewise, several of Lawrence’s fictional gifted heroes acknowledge their working-class backgrounds and praise the values of sincerity and rightness attached to them. Kangaroo’s Richard Somers, especially, repeatedly reflects on his connection to “the working people” and the emotional response such connection elicits:
But his heart was big within him, swollen in his breast. Because in truth he did love the working people, he did know them capable of a great, generous love for one another. And he did also believe, in a way, that they were capable of building up this great Church of Christ, the great beauty of a People, upon the generous passion of mate-love.” (K 201)
2Carlyle and Lawrence also arrived at a common diagnosis of the state of European societies: faced with a seemingly dying, mechanised world inhabited by greedy, self-centred individuals, they urged political renewal after an inevitable and, to some extent, desirable period of cleansing destruction. One critic’s appraisal of Carlyle’s troubled revolutionary impulse appears equally applicable to Lawrence some seventy years later:
By the late 1840s, Carlyle was a deeply frustrated man who simultaneously feared and welcomed the revolutions that swept across Europe and who tilted toward despair as one by one the revolutions of 1848 failed—not because he supported the political goals of those who revolted but because he felt the status quo was rotten beyond remedy. His despair at the condition of England and Europe deepened because he lacked the political vision and temperament to devise policies to address the country’s ills, which he had diagnosed so acutely. (Frye 117)
3In like manner, Lawrence cast about for some form of social and political change, which he explored in two different fictional experiments in Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent, whose deficiencies as political utopias are counterbalanced, from a critical perspective, by the scope of Lawrence’s creative endeavour to stage two very distinct political revolutions. I propose to study the evolution between the two novels, from a catastrophic political riot in Kangaroo to a full-blown, allegedly successful revolution guided by spiritual rebirth in The Plumed Serpent, in the light of Carlyle’s thinking on revolution, anarchy, democracy and leadership, and how it compares to Lawrence’s. My hypothesis is that the failure of Kangaroo and his Diggers, as opposed to the accomplishment of Ramón’s Quetzalcoatl movement, arises from their differing visions of leadership and relationships to their people.
4This examination will first lead me to delineate Lawrence’s departure from Carlyle as he takes his experiments in leadership outside a European – or even Western – sphere, While studying these parallels, I will delineate Lawrence’s departure from Carlyle, as he takes his experiments in leadership outside a European – or even Western – sphere, advocating a revolution both political and spiritual, in response to social conditions marked by economic preoccupations and financial greed, this upheaval being the sole adequate response to the ills of a society damaged by the war and unworthy leadership. Secondly, these concerns, combined with Carlyle’s enquiry into the nature of heroes, will lead me to analyse Lawrence’s difficulty in creating a humanly, politically and spiritually satisfactory heroic figure, revolution and new order.
- 4 “For it was Carlyle more than any other, more even than Marx and Engels, who defined the ‘condition (...)
- 5 “‘[…] Tell them in your Ireland to do as we have done here.’
5Although Carlyle and Lawrence were both preoccupied with the political state of England in their times, Carlyle wrote almost exclusively to answer the “condition-of-England question,” (Frye 114) which he was among the first to address in those terms,4 while Lawrence approached the question indirectly in his post-war novels, grounding his political fictions in countries ever more removed from England: Italy, Australia, and Mexico. Kangaroo proclaims that England no longer offered Lawrence the imaginative liberty to contemplate the creation of a new order, whereas the nature of Australian society, as he perceived it, allowed for greater possibilities of political renewal. While the cultural difference of Mexico inspired the theocracy depicted in The Plumed Serpent, a conception of society which hardly seemed applicable in a modern Europe contending with post-war trauma, the novel shows Lawrence turning his mind back towards England, with the idea that a similar form of spiritual renewal could be achieved there.5 Despite their differences, both novels stage the pressing need for change as it emerges from the assessment of the political, social and economic ills of the country they examine, the central question being: what kind of change?
- 6 “To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate him by whatever method, new-devised, or slavish (...)
- 7 Lawrence: “Men are not equal, and never were, and never will be, save by the arbitrary determinatio (...)
6Carlyle and Lawrence’s analyses of the critical state of modern societies (English, Australian or Mexican) are based upon the very same factors of degeneration, as poor leadership and insincere politicians, as well as the fragmentation of society, stemming from the application of mechanical labour principles to social connections, which have led to a situation of crisis, the answers to which have been revolution, anarchy and attempts at democracy, all of which are deemed unsatisfactory solutions in the long term. Carlyle thus states that in France as in England, democracy was born of the necessity to put an end to “false” governments, as the people took it upon themselves to take power out of the hands of inept leaders and wield it themselves.6 But democracy, as the direct result of revolution, only leads to anarchy, for “the swarm,” (Niagara 4) as he calls the people, is incapable of governing itself wisely, and consequently, democracy can only be “a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one” (Heroes 357), merely a stepping-stone between a defunct order and a new form of leadership. Both writers display admiration for the power of democracy while expressing their disbelief in the principle of equality7 and in the masses’ ability to rule effectively for their own welfare.
7Lawrence’s ambiguous position towards democracy is brought to light by his response to Australia, and is powerfully transcribed in Kangaroo, as Richard Somers debates the merits of Australian democracy. On the one hand, Lawrence and his protagonist disparage what they see as an excess of liberty and equality: “The people, outwardly free from many of the constraints of Europe, seemed spiritually ‘barren’ – ‘Australia is liberty gone senile – gone almost imbecile’ (246)” (K xx). On the other hand, the perceived nature of those carefree but sincere Australians fosters the idea of a conceivable new form of life, thus voiced by Somers: “Yet Australia, the wonderful, lonely Australia, with her seven million people only—it might begin here. And the Australians, so queer, so absent, as it were, leaving themselves out all the time—they might be capable of a beautiful unselfishness and steadfastness of purpose” (K 93). To elaborate on Bruce Steele’s remark that “an early reviewer pointed out that almost any country would have served Lawrence’s theme. Yet it is a fortunate accident that it should be Australia, for here Lawrence found the ultimate form of democracy (250), before he met the American variety […]” (K xxxi), I would add that suspicious though he was of this “ultimate form of democracy,” Lawrence found it to be ideal ground to start afresh with a new political and social order. Kangaroo thus pictures Australia as a stable democracy under English rule, which is nonetheless threatened by excessive democracy drifting towards anarchy, individualism and financial greed. While mainly giving utterance to the dissatisfaction of returned soldiers (the Diggers) who dread a wave of immigrant workers, in the person of Jack Callcott, and to the ideal of an autocratic regime to combat anarchy and the presumed rise of bolshevism, schemed by Benjamin Cooley, the novel remains politically indecisive as it offers a balanced presentation of the socialist arguments of Willie Struthers and Kangaroo’s projected dictatorship. As Bruce Steele notes: “[…] true to the political realities of his day, Lawrence allows Somers to be tempted by socialism as well as Kangaroo’s quasi-fascist paternalism” (K xxxi), showing Somers to turn away from politics altogether at the end of the novel, with the realisation that neither of the two ideals truly fits his view of a new social and political order. Ironically, despite his criticism of democracy as “encourag[ing] men to think of society as a mere collection of individual units, each pursuing his best interest in isolation from his fellow men” (Alexander 252), Somers refuses to commit himself to the creation of a new, organic society and retires ever further into his individual self.
8Richard Somers’s rejection of Ben Cooley’s scheme for an autocratic regime based on the principle of Love is brought to a pitch by the riot which breaks out at the Socialist meeting, as he is suddenly faced with the blood-lust and purely destructive impulse of the incontrollable “mob.” The question of the necessity of revolution and chaos to usher in a new order is thus briefly approached in Kangaroo and further discussed in some essays, before being enacted in The Plumed Serpent. Lawrence writes in Mornings in Mexico of the appeal of absolute destruction as a condition for rebirth, linking this cyclical conception to Aztec cosmogony, which he fully develops in The Plumed Serpent: “I prefer to believe in what the Aztecs called Suns: that is, Worlds successively created and destroyed. […] I like to think of the whole show going bust, bang! — and nothing but bits of chaos flying about. Then out of the dark, new little twinklings reviving from nowhere, nohow” (MM 15). Yet he also wavers in this belief, as Carlyle did before him, sensing that however effective revolutions may be in abolishing defunct political systems, they pave the way to anarchy rather than to a new order, if they are not led with a guiding principle as to what is to come next: “How to begin? Is it any good having revolutions and cataclysms? Who knows. Revolutions and cataclysms may be inevitable. But they are merely hopeless and catastrophic unless there come to life the germ of a new mode” (EP 112). Carlyle concluded from his study of history that only a hero-figure, naturally arising from a period of insurrection, could channel a revolution in a new direction: “No chaos but it seeks a centre to revolve around. While man is man, some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sansculottism” (Heroes 429). Thus, The Plumed Serpent is set in Mexico, which is presented as a much more unstable country than Australia, plagued by revolutions, crime and corruption, and in dire need of stability. In his Hymns of Quetzalcoatl, Don Ramón seeks to rouse the Mexican people from their spiritual lethargy, allegedly induced by American capitalism and European Christianity, which must be cast aside in order to restore the true Mexican spirit and identity. The need for a new order in The Plumed Serpent is argued both as more urgent and more fundamental than in Kangaroo, inasmuch as it will affect all aspects of Mexican life – social, political, economic and spiritual. Moreover, Don Ramón appears a more decisive and cunning leader than Ben Cooley was, devising the upheaval and the restoration of order with precaution, as this conversation between Kate and Ramón reveals:
“[…] It’s never half so brave, to carry something off, and destroy it, as to set a new pulse beating.”
“But you have to destroy those old things, first.”
“Those frowsty images—why, yes. But it’s no good until you’ve got something else moving, from the inside.” (PS 291)
9Lawrence thus moves towards a more controlled form of revolution in The Plumed Serpent, a revolution designed to establish a new authoritative order, orchestrated by one man, whose responsibility it is to take charge of both the ending of the previous system and the introduction of the new one. For Carlyle as for Lawrence, anarchy is “the hatefulest of things” (Heroes 355) and must not be allowed to linger, which is why the revolutionary leader must soon restore order by exercising his authority:
May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder? It is a tragical position for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems an anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him at every step, — him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. His mission is Order: every man’s is. He is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary of Order. (Heroes 429)
- 8 “The man of intellect at the top of affairs: this is the aim of all constitutions and revolutions, (...)
10Whereas Carlyle expresses no doubt upon the desirableness of strong authority to govern the people, Lawrence is less assertive, even in The Plumed Serpent, where Kate Leslie’s and Doña Carlota’s voices rise to check Don Ramón’s supremacy. Nevertheless, Lawrence’s nostalgia for the hero-worship defined by Carlyle transpires in both Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent: in Kangaroo it remains discrete, confined to Somers’s reflections upon the need to reinstate admiration for and obedience to great men, but in The Plumed Serpent it is brought to the forefront, embodied by the deified Ramón and Cipriano. While both Lawrence’s leader figures subscribe to Carlyle’s conception of “the Great Man”8 – a man of intellect, noble, just, humane and valiant, endowed with the heroic gift, an inherent superiority of being, which Lawrence’s idiosyncrasy refers to as “vital understanding” (EP 108) – their relationship to their people sets them apart from each other and dictates their failure or success. Ben Cooley demands obedience through the medium of love, which none but Jack Callcott seem disposed to give him. Don Ramón, on the other hand, seeks to inspire awe and is indeed feared and respected by the Mexican peasants. The great difference between Lawrence’s two creations lies not only in the response each leader expects from his people, but in the actual representation of the people’s reception of the leader.
11Kangaroo’s failure as a benevolent father figure for all Australia results from the lack of passion or adherence to his cause on the part of the Australian people, and in addition, his failure as a character ensues from the absence of scenes in which he could be shown in relation to the Australian people. Although Somers observes to Jack: “They like him on the Bulletin, don’t they? Didn’t I see something about Ben Cooley and his straight talk?” (K 104), Cooley is rarely admired by anyone other than the main characters, and even they at times mock him or highlight his strangeness: “He’s as odd as any phoenix bird I’ve ever heard tell of. […] Fine chap, for all that. But as lonely as a nail in a post” (K 104), Jack tells Somers. Later in the novel, Ben Cooley’s schemes are strongly opposed by the political class, who senses the risk of dictatorship: “All this went on in the open, and roused some comment in the press: at first a great deal of praise, later some suspicion and considerable antagonism, both from Conservatives and Labour. Ben Cooley was supposed to be working himself in as a future Prime Minister, with a party behind him that would make him absolute, a Dictator” (K 185). Yet time and again Lawrence portrays the Australians as a people who abide by equality, ordinariness and indifference, and refuse to acknowledge any superior quality or power, making it impossible for his character to elicit any feeling of submission on the part of modern Australian men and women, while as Bruce Steele points out: “[e]xcept in one brief appearance at the head of the Maggies, he is never seen in relation to his constituents” (K xxxiii).
12Most of the scenes in which Kangaroo appears or is discussed are indeed domestic and related by way of Richard Somers’s inner focalisation. Initially, Somers comes close to worshipping Kangaroo for his intellect, his generosity and his heroic gift of sympathetic love, frequently alluding to his divine nature, an essential attribute of the Carlylean hero, whose mission and relation to other men is “God-inspired” (Heroes 277). However, Somers’s admiration is, from the start, laced with derision, focused on Kangaroo’s physique: “And his face, with that odd look of a sheep or a kangaroo, took on an extraordinary beauty of its own, a glow as if it were suffused with light. And the eyes shone with a queer, holy light, behind the eyeglasses. And yet it was still the kangaroo face” (K 113, emphasis mine). It is also mixed with suspicion, pertaining to Kangaroo’s Jewishness, for even as the several comparisons to Jehovah accentuate his godliness, they undermine Somers’s willingness to trust and obey him: “He was more like a real Jehovah. He had only to turn on all the levers and forces of his clever, almost fiendishly subtle will, and he could triumph. And he knew it. Somers had once had a Jewish friend with this wonderful, Jehovah-like kindliness, but also, without the shrewd fiendish subtlety of will. But it helped him to understand Cooley” (K 110). The insistence on Kangaroo’s powerful will in this first interview anticipates Somers’s final rejection of him and his ideal of redemptive love, which is ultimately understood as a form of paternalistic bullying: “Don’t love me. Don’t want to save mankind. You’re so awfully general. And your love is so awfully general: as if one were only a cherry in the syrup. Don’t love me. Don’t want me to love you. Let’s be hard, separate men. Let’s understand one another deeper than love” (K 209), Somers entreats a dying Kangaroo, thus moving closer to the kind of relationship advocated by Ramón in The Plumed Serpent.
- 9 “I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have (...)
13If Kangaroo was merely perceived as being possessed of a divine force, Don Ramón openly asserts himself as the “Living Quetzalcoatl” (PS 323), the embodiment of the Mexican god among his people, again echoing Carlyle’s characterisation of the hero as “a God among his fellow men” (Heroes 277). Aided by his personal servants, his political contacts, his close friend General Cipriano Viedma and the army he controls, Ramón is able to establish his autocratic leadership more swiftly and successfully than the isolated Kangaroo. Like him, Ramón deeply impresses the British protagonist, Kate, who is attracted and awed by the power of his personality, declaring: “He must be a great man, really. I thought there were no really great men any more: only great financiers and great artists and so on, but no great men. He must be a great man” (PS 138). This statement recalls Carlyle’s nostalgic and desperate appeal to reinstate heroes at the head of governments and hero-worship in their peoples,9 yet like Carlyle’s, Lawrence’s meaning regarding the essence of the “great man,” and its marked italicisation, remains ambiguous: in context, Kate seems to refer to Ramón’s understanding of modern despondency, his vision for the future, and his political grasp, as she reflects upon the purpose of his newly-launched Quetzalcoatl movement: “We must go back to pick up old threads. We must take up the old, broken impulse that will connect us with the mystery of the cosmos again, now we are at the end of our own tether. We must do it. Don Ramón is right” (PS 138). Kate also increasingly (and somewhat bitterly) feels that Ramón embraces his superhuman role: “And now he was this pale, distant man, with a curious gleam like a messenger from the beyond, in his soul. And he was remote, remote from any woman.” (PS 316), as Ramón becomes less human and more prophet-like, possessed with a vision of the Mexican culture’s revival, which his Men of Quetzalcoatl are commissioned to spread.
- 10 “But at the same time, [Juana] cherished a deep malevolent grudge against rich people, white people (...)
14Besides Kate, Ramón is fervently supported by Cipriano Viedma, both in words and in actions, more convincingly than Jack Callcott was seen to support Ben Cooley. Cipriano himself is endowed with the Carlylean “Heroic Gift” (Heroes 317), arousing admiration, respect and obedience as a military man among his troops, as Doña Carlota confides to Kate: “He has great power with his regiments. They believe in him, oh, they believe in him. He has that power, you know, that some of the higher types of Indians have, to make many others want to follow them and fight for them” (PS 158). By contrast, the Mexican people’s response to Ramón’s personal leadership is more complex and wavering. On the one hand, the novel does give evidence of the people’s reverence and submission, from Ramón’s servants to Kate’s, the people of Sayula to the “poor and illiterate” in Mexico City, where “Ramón and Cipriano met with an almost startled respect” (PS 267). Nevertheless, the grudge Mexicans are often said to hold against the higher social classes and any form of assumed superiority10 puts Ramón’s theocracy or “Heroarchy (Government of Heroes),” to borrow from Carlyle (Heroes 249), at risk. Lawrence does indeed hint at the possibility of Ramón’s downfall in one of the late chapters:
But underneath the rather ready hero-worship of the Mexicans, Kate somehow felt their latent grudging. Perhaps they took more satisfaction in ultimately destroying their heroes, than in temporarily raising them high. The real perfect moment was when the hero was downed.
And to Kate, sceptic as she was, it seemed much more likely that they were sharpening the machete to stick in Ramón’s heart, when he got a bit too big for them, than anything else. (PS 404)
- 11 “And yet she was not sure that he did not, in some corner of his soul, resent Ramón somewhat.” PS, (...)
15True loyalty to the leader thus only exists in Cipriano’s soldiers, who show him military respect and obedience, or in Cipriano himself towards Ramón as Quetzalcoatl, for despite their affectionate, personal relationship, Kate suspects him of resenting Ramón’s superiority to himself as a man, but not as a fellow deity.11 The rest of the Mexican population is in truth forced into obedience by Cipriano’s Guard and the fear of capital punishment, after Ramón’s would-be assassins are sentenced to death in a ritual execution (PS 378).
- 12 “The gift that you’ve got, now: and that Mr. Somers has as well: and that people out here don’t hav (...)
16Thus it appears that Lawrence’s ideal of a natural aristocracy, to be spontaneously acknowledged and revered, though defined in both Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent, is not in fact supported by the plots of the two novels. Contemplating various forms of relationship to other men, Richard Somers eagerly considers “[t]he mystery of lordship. The mystery of innate, natural, sacred priority. The other mystic relationship between men, which democracy and equality try to deny and obliterate. Not the arbitrary caste or birth aristocracy. But the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority” (K 107), yet he can never bring himself to submit in this way to Ben Cooley. Concurrently, Jaz Trewhella, Jack and Victoria Callcott do display such “mystic recognition” of what Jaz calls Richard’s “gift of being superior” (K 72) and profess their readiness to honour that superiority,12 in contradiction with the proud, democratic and aloof natures the rest of the novel confers on them. Likewise, in The Plumed Serpent Lawrence through Kate’s stream of consciousness analyses Ramón’s heroic gift and the source of his people’s loyalty, but his zealous mystic effusion loses sight of the relationship between Ramón and his men, and fails to substantiate the Mexican people’s understanding of this superior power:
Now she understood the strange unison she could always feel between Ramón and his men, and Cipriano and his men. It was the soft, quaking, deep communion of blood-oneness. […]
Because, admitting his blood-unison, Ramón at the same time claimed a supremacy, even a godliness. He was a man, as the lowest of his peons was a man. At the same time, rising from the same pool of blood, from the same roots of manhood as they, and being, as they were, a man of the pulsing blood, he was still something more. Not in the blood nor in the spirit lay his individuality and his supremacy, his godhead. But in a star within him, an inexplicable star which rose out of the dark sea and shone between the flood and the great sky. (PS 417)
- 13 “Il reste que la faiblesse cruciale de sa pensée est d'avoir constamment esquivé le problème propre (...)
17Carlylean critics would recognise in this deficiency in Lawrence’s writing the same weakness which undermined Carlyle’s conception of obedience to the Great Man. Carlyle’s interpretation of Kant’s theory of knowledge led him to believe that the Great Man’s superiority is instantly acknowledged by all because Reason discerns Truth. Intuitively then, the heroic gift is detected by the common man but must be actively revered, and there lies the problem, as Henkel points out: “how to train the swarm to obey the heroes’ vision” (Henkel 110). Carlyle never gives any clear guidance on this practical point, devoting his argumentative powers to the sole purpose of urging his country to identify the potential leaders and place them at the head of the State, with full power to govern. No indication is given as to how these exceptional beings might be trained for their leadership roles or how to make them politically (and not just morally) adept. Pierre Vitoux’s analysis13 of Carlyle’s flawed political vision accurately applies to Lawrence’s depiction of Ramón, in my view, insofar as Vitoux considers Carlyle to have evaded the strictly political question of choosing the ablest man to rule, concentrating instead on his heroic, superhuman dimension, which demands absolute trust and obedience without choice or reflection. Vitoux concludes that Carlyle’s Great Man thus necessarily appears to the people in a religious rather than a political sense, as a saviour, which is precisely the role given to Ramón as the living Quetzalcoatl returned to Mexico, and the reason why, though less of a politician than Cooley, Ramón is successful where his Australian counterpart was not, being worshipped as a god rather than trusted as a competent man of State.
- 14 “It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world’s maladies, when you call it a (...)
- 15 “His refusal to accept a spiritual Christ led indirectly to his worship of flesh and blood heroes, (...)
18The Plumed Serpent’s drift away from the party politics and democratic considerations of Kangaroo towards the theocratic regeneration of Mexico mirrors Lawrence’s increasingly urgent concern with the need to reawaken the people’s spirituality and return to a state of blissful, healthy unconsciousness. Both Carlyle and Lawrence called for the rehabilitation of magic, mystery and awe, which science had eradicated from a presently sceptical, insincere and immoral world, in time giving rise to those destructive revolutionary climates which can only be redressed by restoring religious feeling and worship.14 For Carlyle however, this meant turning away from Christian religion and relying instead on the worship of a hero who alone might set social evils right through the exercise of political power.15 For Lawrence, who also gradually rejected the Christian faith of his childhood, seeking his own particular brand of spirituality, it meant probing the depths of unconsciousness as a new form of spirituality, as well as experimenting with pre-Columbian forms of worship. The Plumed Serpent demonstrates the inefficiency of political leaders and social measures to solve Mexico’s intrinsic problems, alternatively proclaiming that what Mexico needs is a regeneration through spirituality so as to give its people a new faith in their identity. Don Ramón argues that all else has failed to impress or improve his people, whose need to be spiritually guided in a new direction is greater than political reform: “[…] And without a religion that will connect them with the universe, they will all perish. Only religion will serve; not socialism, nor education, nor anything. […] Now, Father, we must speak to the Mexicans in their own language, and give them the clue-word to their own souls. I shall say Quetzalcoatl” (PS 264). The novel indeed correlates Mexican people’s listlessness and lack of direction with their absence of any true belief in an uplifting and unifying divine figure, since corrupt politicians inspire neither their trust nor their respect, and Christ and the Virgin Mary are “a gringuito” and “a gringuita” from “over the sea” (PS 224), with whom Mexicans cannot identify. Ramón’s endeavour to bring back the native gods of Mexico, with their attendant symbols and rituals, therefore aims at solving the Mexican crisis on multiple levels, redefining the Mexican sense of identity.
19Where Kangaroo depicted Australians as self-reliant, determined though unconcerned individuals, The Plumed Serpent portrays Mexicans as childlike beings who cannot know what is best or make decisions for themselves. In spite of the fact that this impression is mainly created by way of an intricate study of Kate’s uneducated, dependent servants, which is necessarily biased in so far as it is presented through Kate’s point of view, Don Ramón’s assessment of his fellow Mexicans heightens that impression and presents them as a self-destructive people which needs to be taken in charge and given a creative purpose. His “Men of Quetzalcoatl” (PS 102) aim to take the political control of Mexico by inspiring the Mexican people with a renewed faith and cultural identity, and by imposing a new social and religious order whose hierarchical structure is designed to lead the unconscious, irresponsible masses to follow a wise leader, who will be responsible for their well-being. The rituals and dances Lawrence describes throughout the novel emphasise the wholesome desirability of reaching a state of blissful, healthy unconsciousness, which should be the masses’ permanent state of being under the guidance of a Great Man. This very Lawrencian as well as Carlylean conception of the vital force of unconsciousness is what underlies the argument of a beneficent natural aristocracy: the wisest and ablest man must take responsibility for the unwise mass of the people; as Ben Cooley explains to Somers: “We want to take away the strain, the nervous tension out of life, and let folks be happy again unconsciously, instead of unhappy consciously” (K 120).
20Unlike The Plumed Serpent, Kangaroo does not actually introduce a spiritual rebirth, yet the foundations for the Quetzalcoatl experiment are laid down in Kangaroo, as Ben Cooley and Richard Somers reflect upon the necessity of preparing for a new order before provoking a revolution:
“But you know what you’ve said yourself. You didn’t change the Roman Empire with a revolution. Christianity grew up for centuries without having anything at all to do with politics—just a feeling, and belief.”
This was indeed what he had said himself, often enough: that a new religious inspiration, and a new religious idea must gradually spring up and ripen before there could be any constructive change. And yet he felt that preaching and teaching were both no good, at the world’s present juncture. There must be action, brave, faithful action: and in the action the new spirit would arise. (K 98-99)
21The Plumed Serpent precisely combines “a new religious idea” with “action,” thus completing what Lawrence had left unfulfilled in Kangaroo, but the other two crucial elements necessary to the establishment of such “constructive change” are first put in place in Kangaroo, namely a military organisation of society – promoting order, unity, interdependence – and that healthy unconsciousness which translates as blind trust in, and obedience to, the leader.
22In his comparative study of Carlyle and Lawrence, Edward Alexander underlines Carlyle’s belief in the wholesomeness of unconscious work and unthinking military drill, “which would offer ‘the silent charm of rhythmic human companionship’ and re-establish respect for those virtues which are unrelated to thought or consciousness: namely, duty and obedience” (Alexander 254). Indeed, in Shooting Niagara Carlyle insists on the advantages of developing a collective, harmonious feeling between men through rhythmic movement and cohesion: “one often wishes the entire Population could be thoroughly drilled; into cooperative movement, into individual behavior, correct, precise, and at once habitual and orderly as mathematics […] That of commanding and obeying, were there nothing more, is it not the basis of all human culture […]?” (Niagara 46). Carlyle thus associates his idea of a wise political leader, who should be unquestioningly followed by his people, with a military-like model of social cohesion, in which men, women and children should learn to act in unison and dutifully obey the enlightened authority of the “Drill-Sergeant” (46). Although Alexander does not examine this particular parallel with Lawrence’s own fictional exploration into “combined rhythmic action” (Niagara 49), Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent undeniably echo those notions which Carlyle first brought together.
23In Kangaroo, Jack Callcott exposes the military structure of the Diggers’ Clubs, in which “[t]he men were grouped in little squads of twenty, each with sergeant and corporal. Each of these twenty was trained to act like a scout, independently, though the squad worked in absolute unison among themselves, and were pledged to absolute obedience of higher commands” (K 184). The language used by Lawrence is very similar to Carlyle’s and contains the same ideas of combining individual action with collective movement and of uncritically trusting in the greater wisdom of the leader, whose own duty is to assume absolute responsibility for those under his orders: “If you’re an officer, you study what is best, for the cause and for the men. You study your men. But you don’t ask them what to do. If you do you’re a wash-out,” Jack tells an approving Somers (K 89). The Plumed Serpent replicates the same military organisation, applied to Cipriano’s growing army of Huitzilopochtli: “He divided his regiment up into little companies of a hundred each, with a centurion and a sergeant in command. Each company of a hundred must learn to act in perfect unison, freely and flexibly” (PS 366). Yet in this novel Lawrence dwells less on the exact structure of the army, as Kangaroo painstakingly did, than on the question of how to achieve discipline and “perfect unison” – a question Carlyle’s idealistic orations typically avoided. Cipriano’s answer to his army’s lack of spontaneous obedience is to teach his soldiers the native Indian animistic dances, requiring “intense dark concentration” (PS 364), in other words, a trance-like state of unconsciousness, in which the men abandon their individual selves.
24The importance of ceremonial dances and spiritual rituals is not however restricted to Cipriano’s army, as the success of Ramon’s new order rests upon the participation of the people in public gatherings such as the readings of the hymns and the dance on Sayula’s plaza in chapter VII, the “Auto-da-Fé” of Christian images in chapter XVII, “The Opening of the Church” of Quetzalcoatl in chapter XXI and the Huitzilopochtli ceremony in chapter XXIII. The early ritual scenes emphasise the sense of a communal experience into which even Kate in her deliberate aloofness is drawn, as the whole chapter of “The Plaza” demonstrates Lawrence’s skill in conveying the spontaneous harmony which springs from collective singing and dancing:
Then a voice in the circle rose again on the song, and like birds flying from a tree, one after the other, the individual voices arose, till there was a strong, intense, curiously weighty soaring and sweeping of male voices, like a dark flock of birds flying and dipping in unison. And all the dark birds seemed to have launched out of the heart, in the inner forest of the masculine chest. […]
And one by one, voices in the crowd broke free, like birds launching and coming in from a distance, caught by the spell. The words did not matter. Any verse, any words, no words, the song remained the same: a strong, deep wind rushing from the caverns of the breast, from the everlasting soul! Kate herself was too shy and wincing to sing: too blenched with disillusion. But she heard the answer away back in her soul, like a far-off mocking-bird at night. And Juana was singing in spite of herself, in a crooning feminine voice, making up the words unconsciously. (PS 127)
25Similarly, the bird dance which immediately follows the singing plunges Kate and the other participants into a collective trance which is achieved through rhythmic treading and revolving to the beat of a drum: “Men and women alike danced with faces lowered and expressionless, abstract, gone in the deep absorption of men into the greater manhood, women into the great womanhood” (PS 131). Yet, as Lawrence increasingly focalises on the exact ritualistic content of the ceremonies he imagines, the response of the people during these rituals is no longer described, and as a result, a scene like the Huitzilopochtli ceremony carries none of the poetic language and imagery of collective subconscious connectedness which made the earlier ritual scenes so compelling. Nevertheless, compared to Kangaroo’s limited and unfulfilled ideal of military unison, The Plumed Serpent devises a spiritually-grounded society in which the whole population is to be involved.
26The failure of Ben Cooley’s revolutionary vision in Kangaroo is unequivocal, but does this failure extend to the novel as an exploration in political possibilities? Has Lawrence failed to present the reader with a convincing representation of political upheaval and renewal? The novel’s first shortcoming is the unclear, not to say inexistent, political programme upheld by Cooley and his partisans, who argue that the strain of democratic decision-making should be taken out of the hands of common Australians so as to ensure their well-being, without offering any indication as to what political or economic direction their own policies would take. As Bruce Steele underlines: “[Ben Cooley] is principally a mouthpiece, at times almost an allegorical figure, for elements in Lawrence’s internal debate […] he never develops his political agenda in the practical context of Australian politics” (K xxxiii), and indeed, barring superficial allusions to the repercussions of the Great War on Australia, the uneasy relationship to the English empire and the question of immigrant workers, a large part of the dialogue between Somers and Cooley or Callcott revolves around either political theory and idealism, or human relationships. Ben Cooley’s mantra “the principle of love, the maximum of individual liberty, the minimum of human distress” (K 207) hardly constitutes the vision of a statesman capable of addressing the country’s economic and social difficulties and, what is more, his beliefs do not appear to be central to his followers’ support of him, insofar as Jack Callcott’s frequent vindications of Kangaroo display a greater faith in the person of the leader than in the strength of his ideas. Marina Ragachewskaya’s analysis suggests that Kangaroo’s influence on his supporters is reminiscent of Carlyle’s conviction that the Great Man should be unthinkingly obeyed as the ablest man: “Jack Callcott is enthralled, but he is hardly fascinated with the ideas per se. Jack evidently embodies the phase of this charismatic enchantment where the inner self is totally annihilated in order to serve what looks like the highest cause” (Ragachewskaya 101). Somers, on the other hand, resists such enchantment, so that the novel compromises the credibility of Kangaroo’s movement by having its protagonist ultimately refuse to lend his belief and support to the cause, after seemingly adhering to its principles. Bentley makes an important point on this paradox, which implicates Lawrence’s own political stance:
Somers repudiated Kangaroo not for his authoritarianism, but for three interlocked reasons: because Kangaroo believed exclusively in the power of love, because he did not comprehend the sinister nature of the mob, and because Somers himself was incapable of faithful partisan allegiance. This last point is important in the history of Heroic Vitalism. Many of the advocates of aristocratic principles in the past century have been too sceptical or too squeamish to give active support to the political movements which espouse their doctrines. (Bentley 220)
27This seems precisely to be Lawrence’s paradox, as it was Carlyle’s before him, neither of them being able to apply their vision to the practical political stage, which they disparage and attempt to reform abstractedly or unrealistically, as ideal thinkers.
28Despite his obvious enthusiasm, the imprecision, and thus the impracticality of Lawrence’s revolutionary invention also appears in his depiction of the Australian Diggers clubs set up by Kangaroo. Their exact role and modus operandi remain unclear, chiefly because Richard Somers avoids taking an active part in Kangaroo’s “Diggers Movement” (K 184). Consequently, the novel offers no inside view of how the clubs truly function, besides Jack Callcott’s explanations, which become contradictory as Lawrence develops his characterisation of Kangaroo’s Diggers. Early on in the story, Jack describes the clubs to Somers as being non-political: “We call ourselves the diggers clubs, and we go in chiefly for athletics. And we do spend most of the time in athletics” (K 92), yet he later admits that the alleged “athletics” serve a military rather than a recreative purpose: “The clubs were still chiefly athletics, but not sporting. They went in for boxing, wrestling, fencing, and knife-throwing, and revolver-practice. But they had swimming and rowing squads, and rifle-ranges for rifle practice, and they had regular military training” (K 184), all of which suggests the men are being prepared for some belligerent outburst, which eventually materialises as the riot in chapter XVI. Simultaneously, the clubs are said to have given rise to “a special lodge of the leaders and lieutenants and secretaries from all the clubs” (K 93), greatly resembling the masonic model, both in its hierarchical structure and selective membership and in its ideals of brotherly love. Lastly, in spite of the protestations on the part of Jack and Ben Cooley that the clubs are not meant to be partisan, the organisation of countless lectures for the members on political questions such as “Is Parliament necessary to Democracy? What is wrong with Soviet rule? Do we want a Statesman, or a Leader?” (K 184) disclose a clearly nationalist stance, which is confirmed by Cooley’s declarations: “We stand for Australia, not for any of your parties” (K 94), “[…] what I want is a lively little Australia away from all this blooming world-boost” (K 188).
29Another flaw in Kangaroo’s scheme to reform Australia lies in the fact that the movement he has created is extremely narrow, since his educational programme and military training are limited to the Diggers clubs, the Diggers being “soldiers and sailors who had been in the war” (K 184), even if “those that aren’t diggers can join, if a pal brings them in and vouches for them” (K 92). The majority of the civilian population is therefore left out of the preparations for a revolution and more particularly, women appear to have no place in the creation of a new order, an exclusion which Jack Callcott and Richard Somers complacently discuss:
“Oh bless yer, no. We’re not having the women in, if we can help it. Don’t believe in it, do you?”
“Not in real politics, I don’t.” (K 94)
30The lack of a realistic political agenda and of any widespread following among the Australian population also leads to a considerable lack of clarity about how to bring about the political coup Ben Cooley intends to attempt. From the first, Lawrence has Richard Somers share his scepticism with the reader regarding the Diggers’ obscure plan of action: “And the aim, apparently, a sort of revolution and a seizing of political power” (K 93; emphasis mine), the double disjunct already highlighting Richard’s detachment. He questions Jack repeatedly on both the end and the course of action envisioned by the Diggers Movement, only to be met with indecision masquerading as patience and opportunenism:
“What is your aim, though? What do you want, finally?” he asked rather lamely.
[…] “We don’t talk a lot about what we intend: we fix nothing. But we start certain talks, and we listen, so we know more or less what most of the ordinary members feel like. — Why, the plan is more or less this. The Labour people, the reds, are always talking about a revolution. And the conservatives are always talking about a disaster. Well, we keep ourselves fit and ready for as soon as the revolution comes, — or the disaster. Then we step in, you see, and we are the revolution.” (K 93-94)
Once again, Lawrence’s choice of words conveys vagueness, despite Jack’s apparent final decisiveness, a combined effect not unlike Carlyle’s own rhetoric, whose confident, hyperbolic phrasing overshadows the practical vacuity of his propositions for better leadership. Yet what Lawrence foregrounds here is precisely what Carlyle pinpointed in his analysis of the French and English revolutions, and what he himself called for: the absolute need for change, for the abolition of an intolerable order, regardless of what chaos the revolution may create. Lawrence’s shrewd, stoic character, Jaz, who acts as an Australian double for Richard Somers, echoes Carlyle’s semi-apologetic, semi-accusatory explanation of the need for revolution: “[The people] want to rip things up, or they want nothing. They aren’t ready to come under Kangaroo’s loving wing just yet. […] It seems to me, it’s spite that’s at the bottom, with most men. And they’ve got to let it out before anything’s any good.” (K 161). Even Jack Callcott only supports Kangaroo in the hope that he will bring about some opportunity for brutal change, without a care for the outcome; unlike Cipriano in The Plumed Serpent, who also has a taste for destruction, Jack shows little interest in the creation of a new order after the revolution. His candid avowal of the blood-thirsty pleasure and empowerment the riot gave him confirms Richard’s strengthening perception that “they were doing it all just in order to have something to do, to put a spoke in the wheel of the present bosses, to make a change. Just temporary. There would be a change, and that was what they wanted. There was all the time the excitement. Damn the consequences” (K 187). Thus, the first (and only) act of revolution in the novel unfolds as a metonymy of Kangaroo and his Diggers’ general plan to seize power: an organised disruption of a socialist rally degenerating into a savage riot which culminates with Ben Cooley’s injury and subsequent death, bequeathing neither any substantial strategy or inspiration for a political renewal in Australia.
- 16 “The people sink heavier and heavier into inertia, and the Church cannot help them, because the Chu (...)
31In The Plumed Serpent, conversely, Lawrence minutely stages Ramón’s carefully conducted operations of propaganda and various rituals – dances, hymns, costumes, the burning of the idols and the reopening of the church – along with his reflections as leader as to how the change will affect the Mexican people and the people’s reaction to the unfolding events of Ramón’s revolution. While Kangaroo abstractedly argued for the principle of love and the removal of the strain which democracy imposed on common people, Ramón is shown to care for his people, observing their way of life and their response to the political situation of the country, personally supervising the craftsmanship in preparation for the inauguration of the Cult of Quetzalcoatl, and discussing with the bishop the necessity of effectively reawakening Mexican cultural identity.16 Lawrence goes as far as to give Ramón’s concern for destitute Mexicans the appearance of social welfare:
[…] two men in the crescent began to sing, in magnificent, terrible voices, the Farewell Hymn again. They were men whom Ramón, or his followers, had found in low drinking dens in Mexico City, men with trained and amazing voices, the powerful Mexican tenor that seemed to tear the earth open. Men whom the “times” have reduced to singing in low city dives. And now they sang with all the terrible desperation that was in them, the hopeless, demonish recklessness. (PS 281)
32Ramón thus emerges as a true saviour, restoring a sense of purpose and useful service to his people, awakening and channelling their destructive passion into creative energy, and involving the whole population in his Cult of Quetzalcoatl.
33Indeed, both men and women are invited to participate in the spiritual rebirth of Mexico, albeit separately, as they are given gender-specific roles in every aspect of the Cult. So in the ritual dances, women are encircled by men (PS 130-131); in the church of Quetzalcoatl, men and women must occupy a distinct place: “Men must go the right and left, and remove their shoes, and stand erect. To the new God no man shall kneel. Women must go down the centre, and cover their faces. And they may sit upon the floor” (PS 337). Even the salutes to Quetzalcoatl and to Huitzilopochtli are gendered:
“Now salute Quetzalcoatl.”—And he flung up his arm. She held out her left hand, in the woman’s salute.
Then they turned to the statue of Huitzilopochtli.
“Salute Huitzilopochtli!” he said, bringing his right fist down with a smash into the palm of his left hand. But this was the male salute. He taught her to press her hands together in her front of her breast, then shoot them out towards the idol. (PS 392)
34The female protagonist, Kate Leslie, engages with Ramón’s revolution more than Richard Somers does with Kangaroo’s, yet she joins the ruling trinity as the goddess Malintzi, doing so rather unwillingly and without a proper religious role, except that of bride to Cipriano-Huitzilopochtli. Lawrence does therefore try to give women a more significant part in this his second experiment in imaginary revolutions, but as his letters on the place of women in decision-making indicate, that part remains bound within the Victorian ideal propounded by Coventry Patmore and Ruskin: “There must be women governing equally with men, especially all the inner half of life. The whole must culminate in an absolute Dictator, and an equivalent Dictatrix” (L II 365), Lawrence writes, “[a]nd women shall vote equally with the men, but for different things. Women must govern such things as the feeding and housing of the race. […] And the women shall have absolutely equal voice with regard to marriage, custody of children etc” (L II 368). Nonetheless, Lawrence is intent on having women participate in the political transformation of a country and stresses the importance of equal legislative power, which is not a vision shared by Carlyle, for whom the leader could only be a Great Man, under no circumstances a Great Woman.
35Lawrence also takes care to display the Mexican people’s response to the Quetzalcoatl Movement, both by means of individual characters, such as Kate’s servants or Ramón’s, and of generalised statements asserting the people’s favourable reception of the change offered by the Men of Quetzalcoatl. As in Kangaroo however, it seems that the principal motive for supporting Ramón’s revolution is the desperate desire for change:
Because there was a strange, submerged desire in the people for things beyond the world. They were weary of events, and weary of news and the newspapers, weary even of the things that are taught in education. Weary is the spirit of man with man’s importunity. Of all things human, and humanly invented, we have had enough, they seemed to say. And though they took not much active notice of the Hymns, they craved for them, as men crave for alcohol, as a relief from the weariness and ennui of mankind’s man-made world. (PS 260)
36As the last sentence indicates, the Mexican people are not so much convinced by the ideology Ramón has constructed for them as seduced by the supernatural escape it affords them and the knowledge of its iconoclastic potential. In fact, their enthusiastic acceptance of every new reformist creation is partly fuelled by the thrill of destruction, which Carlyle considered to be the inevitable driving force of any revolution. After the “Auto-da-Fé” of the Catholic idols, “[the people] looked again, exclaiming, half in dismay, half in the joyful lust of destruction […] Sayula was empty of God, and at heart, they were glad” (PS 286-287). The danger of this appetite for destruction in the people, which in Kangaroo was not counterbalanced by a clear reconstruction scheme, is somewhat circumscribed by the repressive power of Cipriano’s army, in conjunction with Ramón’s mystical creation. Yet Lawrence prudently disseminates indications of the spiritual revolution’s possible failure emanating from different sources. A first threat to Ramón’s person and authority is embodied by “the priests, and the Knights of Cortès” (PS 302), Ramón’s religious and political opponents. Cipriano himself constitutes another threat, for “whenever he was away on his own for some time, [he] slipped back into the inevitable Mexican General, fascinated by the opportunity for furthering his own personal ambition and imposing his own personal will” (PS 253). Secondly, Ramón’s efforts to introduce a new order built upon an Aztec religious revival, supposedly with a view to reconnecting the Mexican people with the culture of their past, are met either with a blank refusal on the part of those who are truly devout, such as Doña Carlota or the bishop, or with indifference by most Mexicans, whose readiness to embrace any kind of faith is questioned thus: “‘[I have been] wondering whether it is worth while […] What you are doing: trying to change the religion of these people. If they have any religion to change. — I don’t think they are a religious people. They are only superstitious. […] I feel they’ll let you down,’ said Kate to Ramón” (PS 313). Kate’s assessment may sound condescending. However earlier in the novel Lawrence suggests how Ramón’s meticulously planned ceremonies can be harmfully distorted, thereby threatening the solemnity of his general scheme: “In Mexico, turbulent fellows had caught at his idea and burlesqued it. They had invaded one of the churches of the city, thrown out the sacred images, and hung in their place the grotesque papier-mâché Judas figures, which the Mexicans explode at Easter time. This of course made a scandal.” (PS 253). Thirdly, the resentful, vicious Mexican spirit, which transpires throughout the novel in the observations of Kate or of the omniscient narrator, is accentuated by Ramón’s rise to power and popularity, and finally contradicts Carlyle’s belief in the spontaneous trust and obedience of the people to the Great Man, as “underneath the rather ready hero-worship of the Mexicans, Kate somehow felt their latent grudging. Perhaps they took more satisfaction in ultimately destroying their heroes, than in temporarily raising them high. The real perfect moment was when the hero was downed” (PS 404). Lawrence therefore stages Ramón’s enterprise as a partial success, since he has effectively awoken a nationwide desire for active change in his people, albeit without managing to entirely break free from the pernicious cycle of corruption and destruction, exemplified in the wording of the end of the novel, which echoes Kate’s first impressions of Mexico: “The whole country was thrilling with a new thing, with a release of new energy. But there was a sense of violence and crudity in it all, a touch of horror” (PS 420).
37“Aldous Huxley was right when he asserted that Lawrence could only be understood as an artist,” Bentley reminds us (236). As in every epoch when a crisis arises, artists and thinkers offer their reflections upon the causes and possible outcomes, turning towards past events to find enlightenment upon the present situation, while at the same time anticipating the future by proposing utopian or dystopian solutions, whose political and economic impracticalities nonetheless offer the advantage precisely of being non-political, and therefore free of the restrictions of pragmatism, opening up instead the scope of philosophical or fictional possibilities. As various critics have pointed out, “Carlyle and Lawrence were both outside politics. Their love of nonconformity for its own sake prevented both of them from being politicians” (Bentley 222). Their reformist propositions must not consequently be taken at face value as applicable policies. However, their ability to sense, transcribe and analyse the social and political discontent of their contemporaries is precious from the point of view of literary criticism and metaphysics. Can a writer of fiction or a philosopher be reproached for seeking socio-political answers to the unrest they were witnessing by way of the utopias and fantasies they fashion in words? Bentley argues that “Heroic Vitalism is the aesthete’s attempt to get beyond politics with its parties and economics and its businessmen” (232) and that as such, it is merely another answer to a contemporary issue extending beyond mere politics. The passion and outrage which Carlyle and Lawrence display in their writings do not minimise the incongruity of their political ideals, but they do testify to their staunch preoccupation with the future of England and of their fellow countrymen and women. What Siegel writes of Carlyle seems equally applicable to Lawrence: “A prophet in the true biblical sense, Carlyle spoke out boldly, passionately through hyperbole, paradoxical truism, direct exhortation, and any rhetorical device with which he could bludgeon his readers into agreement and belief” (Siegel 1).