Even the woman loved by a man constantly undergoes changes and he continues to love her because of the change. In this novel, the characters do nothing but live. They have to live but not according to any pattern, good or bad or volatile, because once they shape themselves into a pattern, they cease to live and novel falls dead.
Similarly, in life we have got to live or we are nothing. The exact meaning of living is like the meaning of being. People go into the desert to seek God, or money, or wine, or woman, or song, or water or political reform or votes.
It is as sudden as rain in summer and none can say when it will come. In this great confusion, disorder and unpredictability we need a guide. The novel tells us what a man alive does and when a man becomes a dead man in life. It tells us, for instance, how a man alive loves a woman, and how a dead man in life courts her; how a man alive eats his dinner and how a dead man in life munches it. It tells us how a man alive shoots his enemy and how dead man in life throws bombs mercilessly at men, who are neither his enemies nor friends, and therefore becomes a criminal.
The novel is the best guide which helps us to live, without getting ourselves unnecessarily disturbed by the theory of right and wrong, good or bad, which are always there. It is apathy to remark that the novel is the big book of life. It can make the whole human beings as active and alive.
Lawrence feels that the Bible is also akin to a great novel because it deals with God and His creation. In the novel, the characters present varied actions and the situations are dealt with as per pattern.
A character in the novel conveys lively thoughts, related to human understanding and ideologies. The presentation in the novel is of great importance.
The novelist seeks to leave the grand impression and indelible imprint on the tender mind and heart of the readers. In this regard, Lawrence has sought that the novels must see the plain ways of life. The whole world is compacted with sight as well as sound understanding. He compares the freckles on the skin and the blood in the human body to the mind that controlling them and calls them equally alive.
The importance of the man alive is understood intricately and profoundly by a novelist than men of Theology. Religion depends on the theory of soul and life after death but the novelist is only thinking about the present moment and life in it.
The philosopher talks about spirit and infinite knowledge contained in it but for a novelist it the living that contains all the understandable knowledge. Everything else is conjecture and speculation. Any idea is meaningless until it is received and understood by a live person. It does not have a life of its own.
Hence, the man alive is much more important than the lifeless ideas and concepts. The scientist does not value living beings and wants to analyze it lying dead and motionless under a microscope.
To a scientist, a human being is a sum total of its different parts or organs like heart, liver, etc. In an attempt to illustrate the importance of the novel Lawrence explains the importance of life and the living man. He says that the whole living man, the man alive, is more important than his thoughts, ideas, his mind, or his stomach or liver or kidney or any other parts of his body.
Lawrence says that this is what scientists and philosophers fail to understand. According to Lawrence a novel shows life and its characters are nothing but man alive. The novelist understands the importance of life and the man alive. Therefore the novelist is better than the scientist or the philosopher. He calls it a funny superstition that people think of themselves as a body with a soul in it. The hand has a life of its own. It has knowledge and can think and act for itself.
The hand is as much a part of the living man as the mind. The pen held by the hand however is not alive. A man alive extends only to his fingertips. Lawrence says that whatever in a man is alive constitutes the man alive. The hand, skin, freckles, blood and bones are very much alive and part of the man alive. The living body therefore must not be compared to inanimate objects like tin cans or clay vessels.
Lawrence in this essay tries to explain why the novelist is better than the philosopher or the scientist and in order to do so he explains the importance of the man alive. According to Lawrence the novelist possesses an intricate understanding of the man alive more fully than a parson, a philosopher, or a scientist. The parson speaks about souls in heaven and the afterlife. But for the novelist heaven is in the palm of his hand and the tip of his nose which are alive. The novelist is not concerned about life after death.
He is wholly concerned about life at present and with the man alive. The philosopher speaks about infinite knowledge possessed by the pure spirit. But for the novelist there is no knowledge beyond what the living body can perceive. For philosophers nothing but thoughts is important. They are not alive. They are like radio signals floating in the air which are meaningless until they reach the receiver — a radio device that decodes the signals into a meaningful message.
But the thoughts nevertheless are not alive. It is only because the man alive receives them that they become alive. Only a man alive can be stimulated by thoughts. Thus the living body is more important than the message conveyed by thoughts. According to Lawrence nothing is more important than life. Living things are more valuable than dead objects. A living dog is better than a dead lion but a living lion is better than a living dog. Lawrence says that scientists and philosophers find it difficult to accept the value of the living.
For the philosopher nothing but thoughts matter.
0コメント