A review by hadeanstars
The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence

4.0

Extremely difficult to rate this work, not least because of a myopic cultural view, which I freely admit. This is a complex, deep, unhappy piece of writing. Lawrence is undeniably a genius, in my opinion (which is worth very little of course) possibly the greatest writer of the 20th century, and The Plumed Serpent only underlines his astonishing power. But that does not mean we have to agree with him. In fact, I agree with DHL on very little, philosophically, politically, even emotionally. But his capacity for seeing beauty and humanity was unparalleled. His message is always ruined, where it is ruined, by his bitterness. This is understandable, he was treated abominably by the British government for marrying a German woman and went into an unwanted exile for his last years. His health deteriorated, so he was sick and far from home. He found himself eventually in Mexico and this novel is the result.

There are many correlations here with the shorter and more succinct [b:The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories|459093|The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories|D.H. Lawrence|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1174941655l/459093._SY75_.jpg|1422147] which dwells on the same themes. The subjugation of the white consciousness under a smothering barbarian spirit.

But down on it all, like a weight of obsidian, comes the passive negation of the Indian. He understands soul, which is of the blood. But spirit, which is superior, and is the quality of our civilization, this, in the mass, he darkly and barbarically repudiates.

Our heroine is gradually, and almost sickeningly overcome. Her spirit is subsumed inevitably, because it cannot stand against the primal consciousness. This makes for a powerful and palpable sense of discomfort, but more uncomfortable are the political ideas, and the clash of man against woman. This is the clash within all of DHL's works, but here there is an awkward racial element. I would not say that this work is racist, although it might be interpreted as such, rather it is a product of its time. In many ways Lawrence admires and proclaims the aboriginal powers of Mexico here. He uses songs, chants and hymns, and a great deal of poetry to evoke the subterranean heart of Mexico. Often it is powerful and evocative, and occasionally brutal and disturbing. This becomes yet another expression of his by now classic war of the sexes and his oft visited theme that marriage is a kind of subjugation also. That a man cannot be at peace with a woman until one or other is dominated and reconciled to their inner combatant.

Ah, the soul! The soul was always flashing and darkening into new shapes, each one strange to the other. She had thought Ramón and she had looked into each other's souls. 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. Whereas Cipriano had suddenly opened a new world to her, a world of twilight, with the dark, half-visible face of the god-demon Pan, who can never perish, but ever returns upon mankind from the shadows. The world of shadows and dark prostration, with the phallic wind rushing through the dark.

Here there is the added dimension of older gods than those of the Church. Quetzlcoatl becomes a central character in the narrative, and he is manifested through the character of Ramón, who is inevitable and overwhelming.

The novel's central character Kate is a white, middle-aged Irish woman who has spent much time in the United States, and her fiery and independent spirit is eventually overcome. She presents the opportunity for Lawrence to expound his political ideals. Indeed, this must be Lawrence's most political novel.

[T]here are only two great diseases in the world to-day--Bolshevism and Americanism; and Americanism is the worse of the two, because Bolshevism only smashes your house or your business or your skull, but Americanism smashes your soul.'

I would not disagree with this however. And then:

'There is no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.'

These are the same central concepts that build uncomfortably to an apotheosis of powerlessness. You might almost think of it as a fascistic kind of manifesto. That there is a strength and inevitability to some primal drives that cannot be resisted, most especially by the dilettantish 'civilised races', who are too cultured to contend with the unbreakable death stare of the old gods whose language is all blood and bone, which oppresses mere philosophy:

Sometimes, in America, the shadow of that old pre-Flood world was so strong, that the day of historic humanity would melt out of Kate's consciousness, and she would begin to approximate to the old mode of consciousness, the old, dark will, the unconcern for death, the subtle, dark consciousness, non-cerebral, but vertebrate. When the mind and the power of man was in his blood and his backbone, and there was the strange, dark inter-communication between man and man and man and beast, from the powerful spine.

What results is a work which is undeniably brilliant, but very difficult to love or even at times, to agree with. Certainly there is something here which is made up of Lawrence's own bitterness, his rejection and isolation. He is decrying his own powerlessness through the lens of the old Aztec gods. It is a supremely Plutonic work, brooding, dark, uncomfortable.

Not to be taken lightly.